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High Demand Religion Presentation for ISSTD · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Hello. I'm going to go ahead and start. Good morning to all of the peoples. Thank you for letting me do this. I have done a lot of presenting, and usually it doesn't make me nervous as long as I get time to research and time to practice.
• 1:21
  But this one is still so raw and emotional for me. I'm not sure that I could do it by myself. And so I am practicing coming out of isolation and practicing connecting and practicing being with my safe people to talk about the hard things. Also, some pieces of this are more difficult content. So that's why I was really like, please read this to make sure you know what's coming.
• 1:56
  And of course, tending to yourselves before and during and after listening to the presentation as always because I do want people to be safe. And some of this is really hard. Some of you, it's not a big deal at all and you're just here to support me. Thank you for cheering me on. Others, it may be, like for myself, more sensitive and difficult.
• 2:20
  It's a lot to wrestle with and stay present with. And then also just to be clear and explicit again, I know I put it in there, and it warns you when it's come up, but we are recording for the podcast because I can't record while I present, but I can record while I rehearse, which is how I usually record my talks for y'all. So I am recording. You're welcome to put anything you would like in the chat as we go. I will respond to all of that after just because I am recording presentation for the podcast.
• 2:56
  So I can respond after. If you don't want to stay for discussion or questions after, that's okay. If you need to come and go because it is a workday and an unexpected Monday morning together, that's fine too. Thank you so much. I will get started.
• 3:16
  Here we go. When we are talking about religious trauma, there is a growing acknowledgement that the role spiritual dimensions play in caring for are the folks we work with and for ourselves. This underscores the importance of therapists recognizing the centrality of their clients' beliefs, our absence of beliefs to their worldview, which can profoundly influence psychosocial functioning. The literature is starting to talk about it more specifically, the abuse in religion and spirituality. It's not something that has been super explicit historically in the literature, but since the 1990s, especially since the Leaving the Fold book came out, which I have talked about on the podcast before, if anyone wants or needs to go back to listen to those chapters, it's rough.
• 4:11
  It's rough if you grew up in that environment. But since that, that was really the beginning of the research into this explicitly. And then being able to talk about what it is we're talking about and being able to lay it out as specific kinds of harm and how that harm happens is really important to being able to help with healing. The complexity of that includes everything from religious or spiritual authority being misused or exploited all the way through them actually doing the abuse directly. Either way or anywhere on that continuum, it causes psychological spiritual harm.
• 4:54
  And that includes manipulation, coercion, exploitation, or betrayal of trust within religious or spiritual contexts, as well as specific instances like clergy perpetrated sexual abuse. This presentation is primarily specifically focusing on high demand religious trauma. Spirituality can foster meaning making and post traumatic growth, So I also wanna be really clear that we are not hating on faith, that we're not hating on religion, that we're not anti religion or anti faith, and that's really important for therapists as well, that we're not taking this binary approach either way, and that we hold space for some of the religious, spiritual, or even mindfulness practices that have a lot of benefit for trauma survivors, including reducing physiological stress responses. It also correlates with lower depression or PTSD systems. It can provide attachment examples, figures, and opportunities, and it can be linked to resilience and recovery.
• 6:09
  Forgiveness, which I know can be a hot topic, and I think that also gets abused and exploited, but generally in a healthy perspective can be reducing anger or helping let go of resentment or shame that wasn't even ours to begin with. Spiritual identity also buffers trauma related identity disturbance and restores coherence, especially those with chronic or ongoing abuse. Faith can also protect against existential despair. Belief systems can counter hopelessness and suicidality, especially in complex trauma. Sacred rituals aid in embodiment and regulation.
• 6:52
  Participating in religious or spiritual rituals can help survivors reconnect with their bodies, regulate affect, and access memory in tolerable ways. Faith can mediate transgenerational trauma and foster resilience and also be cultural anchors, especially in BIPOC and other communities. Also, it's really important that we note that while spirituality may foster resilience for many BIPOC and LGBTQ individuals, these practices have had to be decolonialized and reimagined outside of the frameworks that once caused harm through forced assimilation and missionary agendas. So a sociological study by Slade in 2023 found that about one third of United States adults have experienced religious trauma at some point and highlighted that around ten to fifteen percent currently suffer from religious trauma symptoms. So looking at the difference between healthy spirituality and what we're talking about with religious trauma, in healthy spirituality, we still have personal autonomy, it encourages exploration, and there's unconditional acceptance.
• 8:06
  But with religious trauma, it becomes fear based control, punishment for questioning, and love and worth becomes conditional. What's really important to understand is how those in the religious trauma column really parallel complex trauma or relational trauma experiences, which is part of why we're saying that religious trauma syndrome even is an unfolding diagnosis, almost like CPTSD is now an ICD, and we're trying to get it into DSM because it really is its own, like institutionalized relational trauma. Religious trauma is spiritual abuse. It occurs when that authority is wielded to manipulate, shame, or control others, whether that is explicitly through threats of hell or exclusion or shunning or those kinds of things, or implicitly through moral coercion, guilt, or spiritual bypassing. To be clear, spiritual bypassing is using spirituality or toxic positivity to avoid dealing with emotional pain.
• 9:16
  So some examples are like, just pray about it. God will heal you. If you have doubts, it's just a test of faith. Your trauma is part of God's plan, so you should accept it. These are regardless of what your faith, like what your beliefs are or your faith expression or your doctrine or any of that, regardless of what that is, when somebody is hurting and we miss a tune and don't tend to the pain and dismiss and cast this pain aside, it causes rupture.
• 9:48
  And our brain reads that as a threat to our lives, even if we're well intentioned. Therapeutically instead, we can just encourage emotional processing rather than avoiding it, sitting with people in their pain, validating the trauma without minimizing it. We could still use faith as a framework without minimizing what hurts. Religious trauma is a complex form of psychological distress resulting from harmful religious experiences, including spiritual abuse, coercion, and rigid or authoritarian belief systems. Religious trauma often originates in or is reinforced by colonial systems.
• 10:30
  Unlike single incident trauma, religious trauma often develops over time through chronic exposure to fear based doctrines, high control environments, and rigid moral codes that enforce submission, guilt, and self denial. So again, we're not talking about healthy faith or healthy spirituality. We're talking about these, when it crosses into actually being traumatic, because the things this describes are not healthy for us. Religious trauma is a form of complex PTSD resulting from chronic exposure to that coercive fear based religious environment. This type of trauma is characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behavior within a religious context, leading to significant psychological and emotional distress.
• 11:23
  These settings often employ rigid doctrines and authoritarian structures that suppress individual autonomy and enforce obedience through threats and withholding of care. So hit both trauma and deprivation, right? The harm that happens and the good that's missing. Spiritual abuse, a key component of religious trauma, involves the misuse of spiritual authority specifically to manipulate control or harm, often using shame or fear. And this often comes through leaders or members of the community exerting undue influence over others, leading to an erosion of personal autonomy and self worth.
• 12:06
  High control religious structures are environments where strict adherence to doctrinal teachings is mandated, often under the threat of severe consequences for noncompliance. These settings can create a pervasive atmosphere of fear. Individuals who experience religious trauma often suffer from symptoms resembling CPTSD, such as hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, chronic guilt, and difficulty trusting themselves or others. Religious conditioning is reinforced through repetitive messages, isolation from non believers, and punitive consequences for doubt. This leads to trauma responses that may include dissociation, attachment disruptions, and difficulty with independent thought or decision making.
• 12:58
  Many struggle with identity, confusion, and existential distress, particularly when transitioning out of a religious framework that previously defined their sense of self. The pervasive nature of this conditioning can also result in delayed emotional development as individuals are taught distrust their own emotions and instincts, or even dismiss the signals from their own body. This distrust can hinder the natural development of personal identity and autonomy, leading to long term psychological challenges, including reenactment in adulthood with revictimization via interpersonal violence. In many cases, conditioning plays a significant role in reinforcing trauma responses, Indoctrination often introduced in childhood systematically embeds fear based teachings into an individual's cognitive framework, making it difficult to question or disengage from the belief system without experiencing severe emotional distress. So when we're talking about the difference between faith and the abuse of its practice that becomes religious trauma, Faith is a deeply personal belief or trust in something, allowing for personal interpretations and flexibility.
• 14:24
  Religion is a system of beliefs practices shared by a consensual group, often providing a more structured framework as well as community. Even in the context of religion, there's still trust, there's still allowing personal interpretations and flexibility, and it's still consensual as part of the structured community. But with high demand religions, they are set apart through their intensity, level of control, and tendency to isolate members by reinforcing the belief that they are special or chosen. In colonized context, the line between faith and coercion is further blurred as the entire populations were saved by being stripped of language, land, and indigenous spiritual practices in the name of religious righteousness. So what are we talking about?
• 15:19
  We will come back to that piece in a minute. What are we talking about when we're saying high demand? In the dictionary, the word demand means to call for something in an authoritative way. It's a requirement. So to demand is to ask for something in a manner that implies the recipient of the request has little or no alternative other than to comply.
• 15:41
  This is the difference between a request and a demand, that there's implication that a person feels able to either freely comply with or deny what is being asked of them. Whether with demand there's no viable option other than compliance, it becomes a double bind. If a religious group has requirements for members where there's no viable alternative other than compliance, then those requests can be termed demands. Demands regarding clothing may not mean that a woman is physically forced to wear long skirts or dresses instead of trousers or shorts. However, if she were to refuse to comply with the dress requirements, the resultant negative social, familial, and personal consequences may mean that she feels psychologically unable to do anything other than as the group requires.
• 16:43
  The cost of not meeting the requirements placed upon her in terms of clothing are too great for her to do anything other than comply. And so this request can be seen as being a demand. When we're defining religion, the more traditional view is that a religious group is one that believes its lifestyle, doctrines, practices are the outworking of faith in one more deities. There is usually some level of participation in shared beliefs, lifestyles, and practices. So differentiating between faith practice and high demand religion is not at all the same as practicing one's faith.
• 17:23
  High cost and high demand have a symbiotic relationship where members are left with little personal choice regarding compliance and how easy it is to leave or not. Examples for consideration, a Muslim choosing to wear hijab as opposed to being legally required to do so. Jewish attire may express what mitzvah one has taken on, but using wearing less doesn't make one less Jewish. A monk making a vow of silence may be choosing a lifestyle, but they could still leave if they want. LDS requiring a notarized letter from an attorney to leave and then still keeping people's records and tracking them down is not the same as consent.
• 18:08
  Spiritual bypassing of Buddhism or toxic positivity of evangelicals can be really dismissive of lived experience instead of affirming and choosing a higher level of commitment in a faith tradition as opposed to being raised and not knowing otherwise. So issues of consent. So again, any religion or any group or organization can have this continuum of health and any group like splintering off can have less and less health depending on the dynamics of what is happening and how people are able to participate or consent or not. Another hallmark of high demand religious groups is a substantial power differentiation between a group of leaders and individual members. The group, via its leaders or representatives, is able to make demands of an individual discipline any denial of those demands, but the reverse never applies.
• 19:10
  So someone in authority over me could tell me no if I don't wear a dress or if I can't do this, but I can't tell them no, and they respond to my demands. Right? So that's the power imbalance. Examples for consideration. In the exclusive brethren, elders or male leaders hold absolute authority over members' personal and spiritual lives.
• 19:36
  So the power dynamic is that leaders can dictate whether a member is allowed to have contact with non members, including family. If they question or refuse this, they risk being shunned or excommunicated. So the asymmetry is that members have no recourse to challenge leadership or question doctrine. The leadership is not accountable to the rank and file members in any meaningful way. In another context, under the leadership of Warren Jeffs, FLDS members were required to obey all directives as divine commands.
• 20:09
  So the power dynamic was that Jeffs could reassign wives and children to other men, excommunicate members without without explanation and determine members housing and employment and thus survival. So the asymmetry there is that members could not question or appeal his decisions and any form of resistance was seen as rebellion against God and punished with expulsion or social death. In large celebrity led evangelical churches, pastors are positioned as I'm not talking about all evangelical churches, talking about some of these cases that have been publicized already. Members may be disciplined or shamed for challenging leadership decisions or theological interpretations, while the pastor exercises control over members' relationships, counseling, and even business choices. So the asymmetry is that pastors can publicly rebuke or remove members from leadership or community groups, but congregants have no mechanism to hold the pastor accountable or appeal disciplinary actions.
• 21:17
  So that's as opposed to like a healthy church where the congregation actually does provide feedback, or there's a board that intervenes or things like that. With high demand religion, the label high demand is usually given to groups whereby members are required to have a high level participation in shared beliefs, lifestyles, and practices. These elements can be broadly categorized into the following five areas: education, employment, relationships, resources, and lifestyle. If there are multi weekly or daily requirements in each of these five areas for members of a group, it is likely that a group could be high demand. A high demand, high control religion is a faith community that requires obedience, discourages its members from questioning its rules, principles, and practices, expects subservience and loyalty, discourages trusting relationships outside the group, perpetuates the notion that those within the group are right and superior to those outside of it, promotes extreme or polarizing beliefs, and expects its members to suppress their authentic selves in exchange for the sense of belonging and security the group offers.
• 22:34
  So when do we move from high demand religion into culty? So both terms reference groups that are characterized by intense devotion to a central figure coupled with manipulative and controlling tactics and in which the dissenting person may be punished either directly with consequences or passively via shame, shunning, or exclusion, and they may find it too hard or even dangerous to leave. Many of the people in high demand religions are good and kind and often unaware of any harm that is happening. They're generally trying to live their faith, and they may not know about consent issues for children, may not be aware of other sources for truth, and because of their experiences, may be limited in understanding their other options. High demand groups typically exhibit characteristics such as strict hierarchical structures, rigid rules and regulations, and pressure to conform to group norms and beliefs.
• 23:36
  While these groups may foster intense devotion and commitment among members, they may not necessarily employ coercive or manipulative tactics to the same extent as cults. In actual cults, the intent is to harm. The term high demand group emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century as an alternative to cult in academic and therapeutic circles to describe groups that might exert significant control over their members. The aim of doing so was to shift the focus from religious or spiritual connotations associated with cult and emphasize the demanding nature of such groups on their members. So rather than it was originally trying to shift focus on what the organization was doing wrong that was dangerous or unhealthy as opposed to victim blaming.
• 24:29
  So the shift in language was trying to help with that, but then groups just sort of appropriated that and turned that around. So, cults began to adapt language, trying to legitimize their groups by using other intentional language like guru or alternative lifestyle or spiritual community. In contrast to high demand religion, cults are often characterized by more extreme forms of control, including psychological manipulation, isolation from outside influences, and exploitation of members' vulnerabilities. The distinction lies in the intensity scope of the control mechanisms employed, with cults typically exerting a greater degree of influence over members' thoughts, behaviors, and personal autonomy. The bottom line is that both exhibit manipulative tactics aimed at coercive control over their members and dominate their followers.
• 25:36
  While not all high demand groups exhibit the same level of coercive control, many share similar characteristics and patterns of behavior. It can be tricky to notice that you're in it because the culty groups evolve over time. They may start out with healthy and altruistic goals, such as inner peace or social justice or relationship with God, family, or others. It can even be financial, such as people wanting to provide for their family, but getting sucked into multi level marketing schemes. That being said, one of the hardest things for all of Christianity to see is the colonization that is missionary work.
• 26:14
  There's a difference between sharing good news and making you more like me, which is not the same thing at all. Ultimately, high demand religion and culty groups are essentially the same, and the terms are often used interchangeably. The distinct difference may be who is using it, the cult themselves or the victims of it. Is it cultural vernacular or academic research? If a group displays characteristics of being socially destructive, then it doesn't matter if it's called a high demand group or a cult, the most significant differentiating factor being that the term cult is more easily understood by the general population in contrast to high demand group being used by academia.
• 27:01
  That said, there is some reasoning by those with lived experience that using the word cult is just too direct of reality, especially in the context of trying to support those who are still in it and not yet able to leave. One person on Reddit described it like this: Is it a cult? Yes. Do we move forward our agenda of spreading the truth of how evil Mormonism is by calling it a cult? No.
• 27:26
  Once we get them out, our family and friends, then we can call it a cult. Another one said, The world isn't divided into black and white, hot and cold, good and evil. Things exist on a spectrum. We may even have degrees of murder, even though each one involves someone dying. You could just as easily ask, Well, did you kill them or not?
• 27:48
  The LDS church is clearly higher on the cult o meter than, say, the Methodists, but also lower than the Kool Aid drinkers. Another one points out that it's the qualitative experience that is differentiated. I just want to drop in and say that high demand religion isn't euphemism, but a precise way of describing a quality that some religions have. Yes, Mormonism is a cult, but high demand religion specifically highlights the way that a religious organization may dictate a lot of unreasonable behaviors. Whether we call it a cult, a high demand religion, or something in between, the focus should remain on the impact these groups have on individuals: conform, the suppression of dissent, and the erosion of personal autonomy.
• 28:36
  These harms exist regardless of the terminology used. So, when we're assessing folks in our office, when individuals grow up in rigid, high demand or high control religious environments, their autonomy and critical thinking may be systematically suppressed. This suppression often leads to cognitive dissonance. The distress arises when personal experiences or emotions contradict religious teachings. Over time, some individuals unconsciously dissociate to reconcile this internal conflict, detaching from their true thoughts and emotions to align with religious expectations.
• 29:17
  So for example, like the whole gay issue is an easy one, not easy to deal with in religious trauma, but an easy one to talk about in this context with this point where the mental gymnastics are. If I'm in a high demand religion where I am taught that I am designed and created by God, and then also I'm wrong for who I am, then either when you make it that binary without any nuance or complexity, then it means either God is wrong because God is the one who made me, or I have to betray God to be in line with God. I have to betray who God made me to be, to be like, so it takes more nuance and conflict with that. And so it becomes distressing until someone is able to navigate that. Religious trauma leads to identity fragmentation, particularly when fear, coercion, and shame prevent authentic self expression.
• 30:18
  So the initial screening is the same as with any coercive control or interpersonal violence. In fact, interpersonal violence must be a part of the assessment ongoing due to vulnerabilities post high demand. This looks at issues like agency, what is someone's actual capacity to choose? And that includes assessing for issues like, anything that is disempowering, whether that is marginalized population, disability, BIPOC, any of those things. Consent, meaning enthusiastic consent.
• 30:52
  Are you really able to say yes to all the things you're saying yes to because you want that and it's an expression of your faith? Or how much is you're sort of caught in this situation where you can't say no, or it's not an option, or you don't have opportunity to choose differently? What about the ability to change your mind or to withdraw consent? And what happens if you do so, right? So if I say, I actually want to express my faith by living congruent to who I am, including my gayness, because it just is.
• 31:31
  And so the consequence of that is that you are telling me I'm losing access to my children for eternity. That's not actually being able to consent or withdraw consent. So again, the control and the mental gymnastics they do to make sure that you're not seeing clearly what is happening and the mental gymnastics we have to do within the context of trying to be faithful by how someone else is describing faithful. So we also have the BITE model. BITE stands for the different realms of control in the behavioral information, behavior, information, thought, and emotional realms.
• 32:22
  It works by allowing individuals to respond to these different types of control, noting that our brain tends to deprive us of information regarding the situation we were in. And so we dissociate from some of the negative things and may literally not be aware of it until later. Sensory deprivation and information overload create conditions in which humans cannot function properly. And this encourages the thought process of noticing those types of control and un dissociating it so that we can begin to overcome what was endured trauma. Examples of behavior control would be regulating physical reality, dictating where and how and with whom you live, associate with, or isolate from, controlling when, how, and with whom the member has sex, controlling clothing or hairstyles, regulating food, drink, hunger, and fasting, manipulating or depriving of sleep, financial exploitation, restricting leisure, major amount of time spent in rituals, study, or indoctrination, requiring permission for different decisions, rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, individualism discouraged, emphasis on groupthink, or even threats of harm and violence.
• 33:52
  Examples of information control are deceiving members by deliberately withholding information, distorting information, or lying to They may minimize or discourage access to non cult sources of information, including telling you what you can read or watch or study, where you can get information, isolating members from critical information and former members keeping members too busy or worn out to think or investigate, controlling through texting calls or internet tracking. They may also compartmentalize information into inside or approved sources and outside or anti or unapproved sources as ways to ensure that information is not freely accessible, to control information at different levels and missions within the group, or to allow only leadership to decide who knows what and when. They may encourage spying on other members by trying to impose a buddy system to monitor and control and check on members, report deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership, and ensure that individual behavior is monitored by the group. They may also demonstrate extensive use of cult generated information and propaganda, including newsletters, journals, videotapes, YouTube, conferences, misquoting statements or using them out of context, unethical use of confessions such as information about sins used to disrupt or dissolve identity boundaries, withholding forgiveness or absolution and manipulation of memory.
• 35:44
  Thought control could include requiring members to internalize doctrine as truth as opposed to deciding, but also there could be a hypnotic suggestion of putting it on you to do so. So then it feels like it is your responsibility, not that they told them, but you thinking something different than them isn't actually an option. So then that becomes both a double bind and hypnotic induction, which is not the same as choosing something again that feels congruent with your faith or faith expression. They can also coerce people into having to adopt the group's map of reality through black and white thinking, good versus evil, organizing people into us versus them or insiders versus outsiders. What's really important for us to understand in the context of complex trauma is that anytime we're doing binary thinking like that, that is our limbic system, which means our brains are already responding to danger.
• 36:45
  Thought control can also include changing the person's name and identity, use of loaded language and cliches, which constrict language knowledge, stop critical thinking, reduces complexities into buzzwords, and encourages only good and proper thoughts. Again, the use of hypnotic states, thought stopping techniques to shut down reality testing, reject rational analysis, constructive criticism, forbidding certain questions or discussions, labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful. Examples of emotional control may be if the group attempts to manipulate and narrow the range of feelings, teaching emotion stopping techniques, making the person feel that the problems are their own fault, promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness. Like rather than the problem being with what is happening, the problem is with the person. I mean, not actually, but gaslighting them to feel like it is.
• 37:59
  Instilling fear so that the person is not able to think independently, risk losing one's salvation, enduring the consequence of being shunned extremes of emotional highs and lows, such as love bombing and praise one moment, and then declaring your sin as another, ritualistic and sometimes public confessions, or phobia indoctrination, irrational fears about leaving the group that you won't be happier to have terrible consequences if you do leave, shunning of those who leave, fear of being rejected by friends and family, that there was no legitimately reason to leave. So also targeting therapists and family members who are already out, that it's because of them that you're leaving. And then sometimes even attacking those therapists, threatening those therapists or other helpers in the field that help try to get people out, actual threats of harm to ex members, custody of children, or safety of family. These are examples of culty behaviors that can help determine the different ways they are or are not being controlled through behaviors, information access, thoughts, and emotions. That's what the BITE model does.
• 39:14
  Another way to assess for how culty something is, is through recovery from coercive control. And it looks more like this. So I know that's a big chart, but what it does is have the column on the left about the different realms it's looking at. And then the zero to three, zero being healthy, two being oppressive, and three being extreme. So if we look at that more closely, just for some examples, like control over information, when a group is being transparent and open, that's healthy.
• 39:55
  If there's selective dissemination of information to manipulate perception or control narrative, that's restrictive, but it's not unheard of or not ideal. And also there's intention behind it. That can also happen in society today with safety issues. Like how can you be transparent? But also there's a lot happening in society where people don't feel safe.
• 40:20
  And so having to navigate, how can I be as transparent as possible within the bounds of what is safe? Does that make sense? But then if we look at the same one, restricting access to certain information to maintain authority or control, that is definitely in the realm of what is oppressive. And then total control over information flow, including censorship, propaganda, and indoctrination, that is extreme restriction. That is not okay.
• 40:55
  If we look down the chart, we could also look at, let's pick one, punishment and discipline. If there's an emphasis on accountability and constructive feedback, that's healthy in any relational dynamic. Use of punitive measures like extra chores or verbal insults for discipline, that's restrictive. That's too much. It's not okay.
• 41:19
  And really, I'm not sure that I would even include this as a one. I would move it to a two because this seems trauma informed, but I think it's not deprivation informed. Does that make sense? But then extreme punishment such as deprivation of food, isolation, physical torture, relentless berating subjecting individuals to extended periods without access to basic needs like food or shelter extreme. So that's a different approach for rather than the BITE model, it's another approach, but it looks specifically at how restrictive things are.
• 42:00
  That's the difference. So then the third one that we really have is the cult danger evaluation frame that evaluates the level of dangerousness. So the first one looked at what realms are being controlled. The second one looked at how restrictive or controlled things are, like how controlling they're being. And this one is how dangerous is that?
• 42:25
  And so there's 18 questions that get rated on a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the most restrictive. So internal control, how much political or social power is being exercised over members? External control is, emphasis on directing members' political and social behavior. Wisdom and knowledge, the amount of infallibility declared or implied about decisions of doctrine or interpretation, wisdom and knowledge, the amount of trust in decisions being made by them, amount of hostility by members towards critics. So this would be like the anti literature.
• 43:12
  If you're not allowed to do that, this is a pretty, like, that's a 10. You're not allowed to look at anything critical as opposed to the discussions and debates of, Oh, some people think this and some people think this and I think this, and this is how we navigate that. Like being able to have discussions about it is healthy. Dogma, how the rigidity of reality concepts and amount of inflexibility or fundamentalism. Recruiting emphasis put on attracting new members or the amount of proselytizing.
• 43:47
  Front groups, the number of subsidiary groups using different names of the main group, especially when connections are hidden. Wealth, the amount of money or property desired or obtained by a group. Emphasis on members' donations or economic lifestyle of leaders compared to regular members. Sexual manipulation of who gets to decide what and which kinds of sex are healthy or not, or when having sex is healthy or not, or who you have it with or not. All the things.
• 44:24
  Sexual favoritism, if different people have different rules. So for example, censorship, amount of control over members' access to outside opinions, isolation the amount of effort to keep members from communicating with nonmembers including family, friends, and lovers dropout control efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts violence, amount of approval when used by or for the group paranoia, the amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies exaggeration of perceived power of opponents, prevalence of conspiracy theories. The more conspiracy theories there are, the more unhealth there is. Grimness decisions, degree of individual dispowerment created by the group. This is not the same as them saying that you have agency or not, because they can say that.
• 45:41
  But if you're not actually able to use it, then that's a high score. You've surrendered your will. It doesn't matter whether they say you have it or not. Hypocrisy, the amount of approval for actions which the group officially considers immoral or unethical when done by or for the group. So the clinical impact of all of this is chronic fear and cognitive dissonance, again, doing those mental gymnastics, trying to make it make sense, which again is what parallels that interpersonal violence, that dynamic.
• 46:19
  High control religious environments contribute to fragmented identity development with decreased awareness of self and decreases access to self. This abuse can have profound and far reaching effects, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and these symptoms are like PTSD symptoms with navigating experiences of depression, anxiety, and self harm. So we see this here, this study from last year showing people who reported experiences of religious trauma, forty percent of them had PTSD symptoms, twenty percent experienced or expressed identity confusion, twenty five percent had depression and anxiety, and fifteen percent wrestled with guilt or shame. Common physical symptoms: the fear response from the amygdala, the critical thinking being suppressed in the cortex, and memory processing not working properly in hippocampus, which is why it is hard in interpersonal violence or in high demand religion, because it's a parallel process, why it is hard to remember what is happening to you as bad. It's why it's hard to get out because your memory is literally not functioning.
• 47:41
  Remember when your amygdala turns on, your hippocampus turns off. So when we're having that fear response and the amygdala is recognizing danger, we're not making memories about it. So it's hard to remember that we're in danger. It makes me think of, there's a Doctor Who episode where there are scary monsters, of course, but they can't remember that they saw the monsters, so they have to keep marking on their skin with Sharpie. And then they're always surprised when they are covered in the marks with the Sharpies, that that's how many times they saw the monsters because they don't remember it.
• 48:15
  That's this. So that shows up the impact of that on the body is chronic fatigue and autoimmune disorders, long term stress responses, digestive issues, hypervigilance, internalized guilt, body numbing, panic attacks, sexual dysfunction, especially from purity culture, that shame or physical pain. We'll talk about that a little bit too. High control religions demand perfection and that leads to self criticism and burnout. And common perfectionism patterns include moral perfection, trying to be pure or righteous enough.
• 48:55
  And so feeling never good enough because you can't do that. Like it's not possible because we're humans. Constant self surveillance, fear that God or religious leaders are watching so trying to watch yourself so that you don't get in trouble with them, which makes it hard to do anything out of line at all, right? It goes back to the blanket training workaholism in faith communities and committing to religious duties to the expense of personal health. This can sometimes develop into religiosity, development of OCD centered around moral purity, sin, and salvation, repetitive prayers, rituals, confessions, avoidance behaviors, like avoiding media or people or places, and then dissociation when experiencing intrusive thoughts about religious punishment.
• 49:53
  It's a form of complex trauma because it's chronic, relational, and ongoing. There's coercion. It's fear based. It has the psychological and emotional impact. It includes those symptoms that we just talked about from that pie chart and identity confusion and existential distress.
• 50:11
  And it is conditioning that then reinforces the trauma responses. So religious trauma literally requires trauma responses to remain active. The trauma inflicted can engender profound spiritual insecurity, leading to a deep sense of grief, shame, and existential disorientation. Individuals may resort to maladaptive coping such as eating disorders or engaging in dysfunctional relationships. Remember that maladaptive is not that we are bad or that we are maladaptive.
• 50:50
  It is that what we're trying to do to cope is not working because that's not where the problem is. This can also rupture the sacred bond between an individual and their faith, sparking feelings of anger because it is an injustice. Purity culture trauma specifically can leave us feeling damaged for engaging in normal developmental behaviors. We can experience guilt or shame for leaving the faith, being told we are lost or selfish for questioning, and then internalizing that sinfulness, feeling inherently broken, unworthy of love, or irredeemable. Religious trauma as a syndrome, all of these things we've been talking about with loss of autonomy, difficulty trusting and building relationships, attachment disruptions, and intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.
• 51:44
  That disruption of sense of self through loss of identity and isolation and loneliness, difficulty making decisions, decision paralysis due to religious conditioning, conflict in making choices. I have to figure out what the right decision is. I have to choose the right. I have to do the right thing. Like it's very binary limbic system based thinking instead of frontal cortex relational.
• 52:10
  And then adding again in residential schools and missionary orphanages, attachment trauma was institutionalized. Children were separated from family, punished for using native language that happened with deaf people as well. I can't, I have to say that, and taught to equate submission with love, creating enduring patterns of dissociation and moral injury. That leaves us in a state of hypervigilance with fear based teachings and a difficulty relaxing, like constantly feeling on edge, even when our bodies are in safe environments. The sexual dysfunction and shame value being tied to sexual purity, sexuality viewed as inherently sinful, the impact of purity culture on sexuality, stigmatization of sexuality in religious environments, association of sexual desire with guilt and shame, sexual dysfunction common among individuals from purity culture backgrounds linked to negative perceptions of sexual intimacy, struggles with self worth, challenges in accepting sexual identity, feelings of inadequacy related to sexual experiences, all of this really impacting normal sexual development.
• 53:32
  The invasion of our inner life, the sacred made unsafe. So what happens is that leaders claim access to a member's thoughts, motives, and moral worth, often demanding confession, submission, or compliance, with no space internally for private discernment. The impact is the person's conscious is overridden by an external authority claiming divine sanction. That is spiritual rape. Like bodily violation, it breaches the sacred boundary between the self and other.
• 54:04
  I was told what God wanted from me even when it went against what I knew inside was right. I stopped trusting myself completely. The colonization of belief? God is an abuser by proxy. So what happens?
• 54:19
  The group or leader claims to speak for God, equating disobedience to leadership with disobedience to God. The impact is that this distorts the person's image of the divine, often fusing God with threat, control, or coercion. That is spiritual rape. The most intimate relationship a person's connection with the divine is hijacked and weaponized. Consent being coerced when yes doesn't mean yes.
• 54:47
  What happens is members appear to willingly submit, but under threat of hell, expulsion, or loss of family, or divine rejection, a survivor may feel complicit in their own oppression, deepening shame and confusion. That is spiritual rape. The illusion of consent under extreme pressure is a core feature of abuse, whether it's spiritual or otherwise. Trauma dissociation and moral injury? Survivors often suffer from religious trauma syndrome, including all of those symptoms, and the impact is that many describe feelings spiritually hollowed out with severe identity disruption and a loss of existential safety.
• 55:30
  That is spiritual rape. It reflects the nonconsensual violation of the deepest, most sacred parts of self. Spiritual rape is not about physical violation, though in some instances it can include that. Generally, it is about the soul being used, manipulated, and invaded under the guise of love, truth, or salvation. That's not love at all.
• 55:56
  So how this gets impacted by or impacts dissociation, depersonalization increases when we feel disconnected from who we are. Derealization increases when it feels like the world outside of us is not congruent with the world that we're experiencing. Amnesia increases, like we were talking about with the limbic system. And then that's normalized as like part of setting apart or through repetition or hypnotic induction. State shifts between the faithful self, which is trying to conform, and the authentic self, which is suppressed.
• 56:37
  And then with DID, fragmentation of identity due to chronic exposure to religious coercion and control, attempting to keep up with high demands while within the limits of being so controlled. And then with attachment, we're trying to maintain, it's just like with relational trauma, we're trying to maintain attachment to what we need to stay alive, even when those relationships don't meet the criteria for emotional safety, respect, or freedom. And this can trap survivors in a system where belonging is conditional and boundaries are violated. And this delays healing by reinforcing the idea that love must be earned through compliance, which is not love. And even when this sets up survivors for revictimization via interpersonal violence.
• 57:28
  When we combine the dissociative splits or state shifts between the faithful self and the authentic self with infanticidal attachment, where the caregiver's love is so conditional that it effectively kills the child's emerging sense of self so that conformity looks like agreeing we do not exist, then any expression of individuality or dissent by the child is met with the withdrawal of affection, punitive measures, or spiritual condemnation. This environment fosters profound internal conflict as the child must choose between authentic self expression and the need for caregiver approval. The child may develop a pervasive sense of shame and self doubt, struggling with identity formation and experiencing difficulties in establishing healthy relationships. The suppression of independent thought and autonomy can result in delayed emotional development as the individual has been conditioned to distrust their own feelings and perceptions. Religious trauma often encompasses experiences of coercive control, a form of psychological abuse, where an individual or group employs manipulative tactics to dominate and regulate another's behavior, thoughts, and beliefs.
• 58:50
  Religious contexts, coercive control can manifest through the imposition of strict doctrines, isolation from non believers, and the use of fear based teachings to ensure compliance. This form of control not only undermines personal autonomy, but also instills deep seated fear and dependency leading to long term psychological distress. Coercive control within religious settings involves manipulation and exploitation, including dictating personal decisions such as career choices or relationships expectations. To Isolation Fear Inductions with teachings that emphasize eternal damnation or divine retribution for disobedience, instilling fear to discourage questioning or dissent. This sets the stage for domestic and interpersonal violence.
• 59:56
  Conditional love teaches that abuse is love. These survivors associate control and punishment with care or affection. Suppressed autonomy leads to blurred boundaries. They struggle to assert needs or say no in relationships. Getting sucked into the dynamic of Jade justifying, arguing, defending, or And then the shame based identity fosters low self worth.
• 1:00:27
  I deserve it. And that dissociation numbs the internal warning signals. This causes disconnect from intuition, spiritualized submission normalizes control and powerlessness, fear of rejection mirrors trauma bonds, survivors may stay in harmful dynamics to avoid abandonment or exclusion, and authoritarian patterns feel familiar, concluding that they're doing something right or just need to try harder, even though they are actively harmed and neglected. Then they have learned silence that inhibits help seeking and conditioning to not speak against authority transfers to abusive partners. So here is what we've got.
• 1:01:17
  I did this chart. I'm going to write a whole book about this. That's a side quest. But here's what I have finally seen clearly in connecting this, of how these situations and normalizing these dynamics leads us to interpersonal violence. And that also is what is happening when there is online drama, trauma drama with the communities or with bullying or with things like that.
• 1:01:47
  When we are, instead of being healthy ourselves on a parallel, like recovery programs, say journey, right, fellow travelers, that kind of language, with other people who are doing their internal work. When we don't do our internal work and we are caught in these dynamics, and then we turn to others and we are turning towards the systems of others to bring us healing instead of I am turning towards my system and learning to trust my own system. So here's the chart that I made. If we have the relational domains of safety, boundaries, support, power dynamics, communication, accountability, conflict resolution, identity, and the freedom to leave. Here's what it looks like with healthy friends, partners, community.
• 1:02:43
  When that gets exploited in abusive relationships, this is how we feel. And it shows up in trauma bonding and relational experiences like partners, friendships, all the ships, you all heard that this morning, all the ships or high demand groups. Okay? I have just realized that that is different. What shifts it is how much access to my internal world I have.
• 1:03:11
  Maybe you already knew this. I did not know this. For me, is a huge breakthrough and I'm sharing it with you right away. Also, can post this in the community later, the picture of this. When we apply this specifically to our internal world, when we have healthy friends, partners, and communities, we have the time and space to visit or explore internally, with it being a private and personal experience, which gives us access and awareness to ourselves, which increases our capacity to connect with others.
• 1:03:48
  When that is exploited through abusive relationships, we are expected to share, reveal, overlap, allow others inside for them to connect or have their needs met, which increases internal boundaries because insiders are protecting themselves and each other, making it harder for me to access myself and heart, which makes it harder for me to know what is happening internally and externally. And that is why we feel confused. With trauma bonding or high demand groups, it is demanded of us to reveal and explain details of what is happening internally so that we have to attune to our external environment, which is limbic system instead of frontal cortex, with little access to our own needs and wants while focused on proving ourselves to them, which is compliance and fawning for survival. Y'all, when I am safe in relationship with whoever the ship is, this is what the next year of the podcast is all about. When I am safe with the ships around me and I am safe in my own ship with myself.
• 1:05:00
  There's no confusion. I have awareness and access to myself no matter what I still need to work on in therapy. This isn't something I have to work towards later. This is something that can happen now. And yeah, I'm gonna stay focused on what we're talking about today, but this is a huge piece.
• 1:05:20
  And I think it applies in all of the ways, all of the things. So we'll keep circling back to it. So leaving a high demand religion, Shaw, Dan Shaw, he was on the podcast. I went to a trainee of his last fall. ISSTD will know who I'm referencing.
• 1:05:37
  His concept of traumatic narcissism talks about certain leaders or abusive partners exert control. Remember, Dan Shaw is the one who says you can have a cult of one. That it could have been a parent. It could have been an abusive partner that can suck you in with these unhealthy dynamics that shut you out of access to yourself. He describes traumatizing narcissists as individuals who dominate and subjugate others to maintain their self esteem and power.
• 1:06:10
  So using it's like using it's like filling up your car with someone else's gas. Like, if we're gonna use who's driving the bus metaphors about DID, this is like the bus stops and fills up on someone else's gas. Instead, just go get your own gas. Okay? This environment fosters dependency and diminishes the follower's sense of self contributing to the development of complex trauma responses.
• 1:06:38
  He emphasizes the importance of recognizing these dynamics in therapeutic settings. Leaving activates all of the survival responses because your brain has been oriented outward, focusing on the abusers to attune with them to stay safe. So reattuning to yourself feels life threatening. So flight, avoiding all conversations about faith, hiding parts of yourself from the family, moving cities, erasing your history. Y'all, do you remember on the podcast, like three years ago, I was like, wait, why am I sitting in the family van during church for the last three years?
• 1:07:24
  You're always fighting so hard I couldn't even be in the building. Right? So flight, fight, defending your reasons to loved ones, battling the feeling you've betrayed God, fighting shame or internalized fear of hell, literal fighting for custody or access to your friends and family, All the things. It is right to run. It is right to fight when we are realigning with ourselves internally.
• 1:07:56
  When we are tuning to our systems of our own. Freeze. Disorientation, inability to make new choices, feeling stuck between worlds too different to return, too afraid to begin new. Even after the threat is gone, the nervous system may not feel safe. This is huge because I have said for years, even on the podcast and all my trainings, that the body is the only part of us that has been there the whole time, so our body tells us the truth.
• 1:08:27
  That is false. I have learned that is false. Our body tells us the truth, yes, but we don't always know if the truth it is telling us is from memory time or now time. Because it is right to get away from danger, But our body is going to go into, this is danger to leave when that's what we need to do. Right?
• 1:08:50
  Sometimes we've seen even in the community, it's healthy and good to stay, to have the hard conversations, to face the hard things. But you know what? I'm not going to do that for you. You have to do that work. So some people flick because they don't want to stay and do the work.
• 1:09:04
  They want someone to do it for them. That's okay. That's okay. That's where they're at. That's where they are.
• 1:09:10
  No shame in that. But sometimes we are more uncomfortable to get through what is hard before our bodies are back online in now time. And then we can trust that because we're paying attention to where the danger is coming from. So leaving, they talk about it. This group, Olive and Leaf, they have an amazing article I can put in the chat in the community if you want me to post it, but where it saved as a muffin recipe in case someone saw it on your computer files.
• 1:09:45
  I love that. But it's about how to leave high demand religions. And they talk about these different areas of how high demand religions impact you with education, resources, relationship, lifestyle, and employment. And it talks about how sometimes you just have to leave one finger at a time. I love the nuance of that.
• 1:10:04
  I love the nuance of that. And I think that, I mean, you all have literally witnessed pieces of that over the last few years of like, Woah, okay, I have to get myself out of this one piece at a time until finally you're here and now you're hearing episodes on the other side of it. It can feel like death. They may face high cost consequences, life altering or even traumatic, especially when disaffiliation from the group results in social, spiritual, or familial excommunication. Leaving a high demand religious group has been called a kind of death because it has such enormous changes on your whole life.
• 1:10:44
  It is significant upheaval and reconstruction of identity. And again, with the colonial legacy, like I can't not include this as a BIPOC person. Did you hear how I said that and just owned it? As an indigenous person. Jewishness, Christianity as weaponized to justify slavery, genocide and assimilation.
• 1:11:06
  That's not hating on Christianity. That's not saying all Christians. That is saying as a power. It has been misused. And that's not fair.
• 1:11:15
  That's an insult to who God is, who Jesus was. Evangelism has coincided with imperial expansion. Missionary work creating double binds of safety and God means erasure of culture. Culture, faith becomes associated with whiteness, Western values, and heteronormativity. For many, leaving the faith is also about reclaiming culture, land, and voice.
• 1:11:40
  In Polylegal Theory with a Liberation Framework, you guys, this is the whole rest of the year of the podcast, safety is not the absence of threat. Safety is the presence of support. It is a presence of connection and community. There's transcendent meaning making. The spiritual work, however we want to define any version of God, has to do with the spiritual task of what that means to us.
• 1:12:10
  And we decide that for ourselves. That's not something someone else can tell us. Betrayal trauma happens with religious trauma when there's a loss of existential trust, feeling abandoned by a higher power, the emotional flashbacks when confronted with religious figures, deep identity confusion upon discovering church corruption or abuse. Again, just because my neighbor is the nicest person doesn't mean that there's not corruption or abuse happening at other levels or with other people. And having to hold the, holding both of that, that both things are true, that Sister Sally next door is an amazing, sweet, tender person and treats my kids really well.
• 1:12:57
  And also these awful abusers over here are part of the organization that Sally doesn't know about and I didn't know about and also I cannot condone. Right? That's a lot to navigate. And God can't be blamed for any of that, no matter how you're defining God. When you have been taught your entire worth is dependent on obedience to a rigid system that you are trying to separate from and that your salvation depends on compliance, the mere idea of disobedience triggers your body to respond as if you are in mortal danger.
• 1:13:33
  Getting out is not enough to feel safe. Religious trauma is not just spiritual, it's physiological. And healing it involves listening not just to beliefs, but also to bodies. With our dorsal vagal system that helps us freeze, it tells us those old messages of shame, I'm alone and I can't. Y'all, that's not reality.
• 1:13:56
  That is our brain trying to keep us safe of, You're in danger. Don't move. Like it's trying to keep you hidden under the oppression so you're not in danger of fighting against it or trying to get away from it. That's what's immobilizing us. It's protective, but it is not the same as safe.
• 1:14:15
  You're not alone and you can are actually the healthy, accurate thoughts. The sympathetic system is where we experience fight. It comes with all the muscle tension. There is rage that gives us motivation, focus, and urgency to fix it. We can do that in healthy ways, the fixing of our own choices in our own lives.
• 1:14:39
  This is where we get the message of I have to, and I must. I can no longer treat myself the way they have treated me my whole life. That's how we transform fight. I am no longer doing to myself what so and so and so and so and so and so has done to me. I can't control that my partner acts this way.
• 1:15:03
  I didn't cause my parents to treat me the way they did. I can't cure the trauma of all of the problems, right? I learned this in Al Anon, but what I can do is offer myself compassion of this is what's happened and I have the power to do something about it. Anger informs us of injustice. I recognize the injustice and I do something differently.
• 1:15:27
  The ventral vagal system that helps us flight intentionally gets us back up to our frontal cortex. We fall down that polyvagal ladder and we walk back up the same way from freeze to fight to flight to frontal cortex. That's where we find safety, connection, presence, and curiosity. That is when I am okay enough, even when other people's behavior or society is not okay. We do this through co regulation with safe people who can sit with us without trying to fix our faith or our fear, embodiment, including grounding, breathwork, movement, giving ourselves space to not know what you believe and to pause trying to figure it out.
• 1:16:11
  Take your time. You get to decide for you. Narrative repair is not just cognitive reframing, but letting your experience, letting your system experience that you're not in danger anymore. Looking at the stories of what you told yourself because of what you were enduring and how you can tell yourself differently about your future. The visual metaphors like heretic that was recently on the podcast, addressing the limbic system binary thinking to recognize and wake up of, woah, this is what's actually happening and finding another way out.
• 1:16:49
  It doesn't have to be binary where you have to be trapped or pushed through to your death. You can find another way out. With spiritual sensitivity, studies indicate that clients are eager to discuss spiritual matters if the helping professional are receptive and unbiased. Just like anything else, it has to be safe first, right? Which includes presence, not just lack of harm.
• 1:17:14
  We can foster dialogue in our questions, being empathetic and curious, asking open ended questions, maintaining a spiritually safe space for being reflexive and aware of bias, doing work and training for therapists to have more awareness of different situations, and then faith deconstruction as a process in which individuals critically examine their religious beliefs, determining which aspects align with their personal values and which they wish to discard. This process can be both liberating and terrifying as it often involves loss of certainty, existential security, the grief of losing community and religious identity, and the fear of divine punishment or separation or eternal consequences. That process goes through initial doubts, cognitive dissonance, researching new perspectives, emotional processing, and reconstruction. Stage one, with initial doubts, a person begins questioning, recognizing those mental gymnastics, realizing how hard you've been working to make it make sense, dealing with the internal conflict. Stage two with cognitive dissonance, the individual struggle to reconcile religious treatings with personal values and realities.
• 1:18:40
  Identity crisis as the worldview starts to open up and shift, often we refer to it as a closed system when it's only disinformation and it's always disorienting as we open that up, but it doesn't mean it's bad. And again, that inner battle, which is such a terrible word, but seems to fit the aggression of the oppressor, right? With the faithful self and the doubting self and all the folks in between of how to know what safety is or what we're choosing or not. Researching new perspectives, actively seeking new information through books, therapy, online forums, and personal reflection. The phase is often accompanied by grief and anger as they acknowledge being manipulated or traumatized, and it increases awareness of fragmented ego states and their impact.
• 1:19:32
  Just doing this presentation, finalizing the draft last night to get ready for today, just like I had this sudden, just like a whole wall fell down somewhere inside me. I don't know how else to explain it, It wasn't the same as flooding, but it was like all of a sudden I put on these glasses and could see how this connected to this, connected to this to get me into the situation the last few years and trying to get out and how it was all connected in ways I hadn't seen before. It was devastating. I just wept and wept and wept and wept. The grief of how my innocence was so violated, my literal desire for goodness was violated.
• 1:20:17
  Like it was a whole parallel thing in a way that I don't even know that I'd done yet with other kinds of trauma because it's so hard to stay with it. But this just landed it in ways that were just profound for me. Stage four, emotional processing, processing grief, anger, fear, and loss involving therapy, journaling, support groups. With dissociative clients, again, we're not talking about integration like parts go away. We're talking about being able to have awareness and access to more than one thing at a time, more than one truth at a time, more than one part at a time.
• 1:20:57
  Reconstructing meaning, new sense of identity, purpose outside of religious trauma, learning to trust ourselves and our own instincts, and then turning inward. This is what we're talking about with that chart, turning inward for group conscious rather than people telling us how we should be feeling or what our system should look like. Learning to meet our own needs and discern our own wants and preferences, practice making decisions. And then common family reactions with deconstruction. This is part of why it's so terrifying because of all of these consequences that often turn out to be very real.
• 1:21:38
  Deconditioning has to do with those deeply ingrained cognitive distortions that discourage independent thought and critical thinking skills are essential for helping us regain our autonomy and being able to think for ourselves. We have been conditioned to suppress independent thought, to fear questioning doctrine, to accept absolute truth from authorities. Critical thinking can include Socratic questioning, just exploring, what about this? What about this? And kind of debating and discussing different sides of the same thing.
• 1:22:13
  Recently, my friend and I, with another friend who's also indigenous, we're talking about the talking stick. And what if that got applied internally with our system? Like what if we picked one really specific topic, like whatever, it doesn't even have to be traumatic, but then talked through our system about the one topic, kind of like in a boardroom. You guys know we have a Zoom room instead of a boardroom because boards seem so white and male, but on corporate, but we can use Zoom or we could use outside or whatever your vision of that is to where, like, getting like, what's it like to internally listen to all sides of a topic? Reframing fear based beliefs, teaching about psychological effects of indoctrination, just learning about this stuff, And then exploring questions.
• 1:23:11
  What do I still believe? What do I want to let go of? How do I navigate grief over lost faith? Even if you still have faith, your faith is going to be different than it was when it was imposed on you, which actually is not faith by the way. And then when you have your own faith expression.
• 1:23:30
  And then examining teachings and autonomy rather than indoctrination and looking for that nuance and complexity, that means you are safe and here and connected to whatever your relationship is with faith or not, and those options and choices rather than the binary thinking that is in your limbic system, which means you are in danger and someone is telling you what to do, which is not faith. So it's not about merely losing faith. It allows survivors to separate personal values from indoctrinated beliefs, reconstruct an identity outside of religious influence, define personal spirituality or non spirituality on their own terms, and therapy should focus on evaluating self perception. Healing intellectual autonomy, encouraging us to trust our own reasoning, exposure to alternative viewpoints. Even if you still disagree or think differently, why does science say what it says?
• 1:24:33
  What has philosophy already thought through that we can learn from? What do we learn from history so that we don't repeat what is even going on? Secular ethics. What does that look like? Therapists have to do that all the time, but there's ethics for all kinds of fields.
• 1:24:51
  Ethics doesn't mean the right way to do things. Ethics means how to think through a variety of good, right choices. Teaching how to engage with new ideas without being afraid of it or feeling guilty for doing so, and that it's an individual process with no right outcome. Sometimes it's many right options and you have a variety of choices you can make, and any one of them might turn out just fine. Parenting can be hard after religious trauma or coming out with high demand religion.
• 1:25:26
  There can be some moral injury there if you raised your children in it. We can talk about that more. There are groups, especially online forums like ex evangelicals or XMO, some of which have let go of entire faith entirely or have found a different faith expression or have held onto their faith, but not the abusive culture that they were raised in or experienced. So there's lots of choices of how to get support specifically for, the high demand experiences. But the intersectionality of religious trauma being amplified for marginalized groups, it's really critical we hold space for this.
• 1:26:06
  LGBT individuals have been taught their identity as sinful, leading to deep shame. Women in high control face are expected to be submissive or leads to suppressed autonomy. Ex members are isolated from family and society, which makes recovery really hard and terrifying. Adoptees born into one faith tradition are raised in another. Colonization of BIPOC folks, and poverty as a consequence for leaving.
• 1:26:37
  With conversion therapy, which is when they're trying to pray the gay away, forty percent of the people, well, let me show you this. I have it this way. Forty percent had increased suicidal thoughts and twenty five percent experienced depression or anxiety, fifteen percent or more if you include suicidal thoughts, right? So really that's fifty five percent experienced PTSD symptoms. Fifteen percent experienced dissociation, identity, confusion.
• 1:27:12
  Five percent reported no harm, but were still having to mask, which is harm actually, right? So no harm explicitly in a harm way, but deprivation was still present. Conversion therapy was not good for anyone. Asking anyone to not be part of themselves isn't that okay. Methods used in conversion therapy include religious counseling, prayer, exorcisms, and faith healing to try to remove the same sex attraction, aversion therapy, punishment based methods to make your brain associate being gay with pain.
• 1:27:51
  That's not helpful for anybody. Talk therapy with religious indoctrination, psychologically coercing individuals into suppressing identity or forced heteronormative practices, encouraging forced heterosexual dating or marriage. So two gay people, a guy and a girl being married, right? That's what we went through and we've talked about on the podcast. Understanding more specifically the white savior mindset and missionary work, that the belief in saving non white indigenous or impoverished people through religious conversion often includes hijacking resources, including land, language, and culture, with common narratives, including the need to civilize and save others, and uses examples of coercion and forced spiritual erasure.
• 1:28:42
  You guys, I want to say again, there are so many people who mean well and are involved in different efforts that don't understand this. That doesn't make it okay, but I'm not saying all people are bad or trying to be bad, but it doesn't make it less harmful, the badness. Does that make sense? This is really one of the hardest people to help people of faith traditions look at and see because we're so dissociated from thinking we would ever be the perpetrators. Right?
• 1:29:14
  So there's moral injury in that. And because there's moral injury, our dissociation is really thick. That fog is thick. And it's really, really hard to do that fragility work to look at those layers. Examples of this short term mission trips with superficial engagement, missions, erasing native spirituality, evangelicals shaping political policies that erase religious diversity.
• 1:29:42
  This is happening in society right now that Shiny Happy documented specifically how, not all people again, right? But this specific faith group that I was in when I was little, that I grew up like, it's horrifying to see this, right? Literally raised a generation of children to take over politics in a way that exploits what good people agree, Oh, these are goals that we need to accomplish, but they're doing it really nefarious ways. And that's not what they meant. And it's not fair to, like, that spiritual rape again, where like, no, I actually have a faith in God and want these goals and you're violating both of them by being horrible to people.
• 1:30:29
  That's not of God. That's not of Jesus. And yet, like with Jesus as banner, that's nationalism. That's all these other things. So I don't, not getting sideways, but it's like literally the process of how this happened, how we got to where we are.
• 1:30:44
  This document in this Shiny Happy. I heard recently that Shiny Happy season two is coming out. I can't believe there's more. I don't know that I can handle that. We don't have to talk about it today, but oh my goodness.
• 1:30:58
  Charity as religious control, missionaries providing aid only with religious compliance, humanitarian aid tied to conversion, exploitation of African poverty as examples of evangelistic success, indigenous schools with forced coercion, conversion, both adoption framed as religious salvation and Western Christianity's influence on LGBT laws in Africa and Latin America. If you wanna know the history of that in Europe also, there's some really good episodes in the podcast called to Queer. One of the people on, one of the hosts of that podcast, I think they're a PhD in something history to where this is literally their studies and they trace this through history and talk about that on their own and on the podcast somewhere. It's like, I had no idea this and this and this were connected. It was horrifying at a very shiny, happy level.
• 1:32:01
  So how do we see the difference between altruism, fawning, and colonial harm? With altruism, it's genuine, selfless help that respects the autonomy and dignity of others, motivated by compassion and ethical responsibility in ways that empowers and respects agency and provides help with no expectations. Fawning is a trauma response where people are people pleasing or submitting to avoid conflict or punishment motivated by fear of rejection or punishment, And it creates codependency, suppressing your own means and agreeing with harmful religious teachings because you don't want to be excluded or have to survive to do the thing. Colonial harm imposes beliefs or control under the guise of helping or saving, but the desire is to civilize or rescue, erases cultural identity and enforces hierarchy with forced conversion that replaces indigenous, which is different than as part of my faith expression, I'm supporting you being you, interfaith work or different kinds of things like that, right? Like it's not that it can't be healthy.
• 1:33:23
  It's that that's what the difference is. I would say again that that parallels interpersonal violence as well. The link between religious trauma and political extremism, which again, Shiny Happy covers and sort of documents how that unfolded intentionally and generationally, which is so horrifying. But survivors seeking certainty jump into rigid political ideologies for structure because that structure is familiar. And then their fear based worldviews are exploited where they transfer apocalyptic thinking to conspiracy groups in a kind of cult hopping format, even though it's political rather than church.
• 1:34:04
  And then the trauma responses in the extremism with individuals who were coerced in religious settings, seeking similar rigid structures in politics. So again, the binary of we're gonna get rid of this and we're gonna do this and we can only do this and we're not gonna do that. That's all binary. That means trauma is happening regardless of what policies or politics you might have or someone else might have, right? That this or that without the nuance is trauma.
• 1:34:30
  It's a limbic system. That being manipulated or exploited by political or religious leaders, trauma bonded to the dynamic of the oppressor with the lack of deconditioning or deprogramming from culty dynamics. So wounded leaders leading woundedly, whether that's in politics or therapists, therapists with lived experience that don't take care of their stuff, the same thing happens. So we have to name the abuse, tell our stories. I'm gonna go more quickly through this part just for time.
• 1:35:07
  And then transforming through our stories and sharing our experiences helps us resolve the confusion. When we start telling our story, when we start hearing the pieces, we start seeing what's missing or what's actually happening or what's there. It's also why healing requires an other. We can't do that on our own, right? We can't do it on our own to, there has to be a mirror.
• 1:35:38
  And for many of us, the mirror has been what's missing. And also, I would suggest it's why we need not just peer support, like official peer support, and not just therapeutic group. Like, that's why this community does not do that very intentionally, because that's still looking for a rescuer and we need to do our therapy and our therapy, and that's fine. If some people need group therapy and go to those places for group therapy, that's okay too. It's not that that's bad, but the and also is our healing actually happens when we are doing our own work with other people who are doing our own work and not just in a peer support way, but in a parallel way and being able to mirror in that way.
• 1:36:20
  And that's what this community has always been about practicing. It is a social and relational rehearsal practice development, right? As opposed, which can be ultimately very therapeutic, but that's why it's not peer support and why it's not, even though I think there are some things that are helpful with that and why it's not therapeutic, right? That's why I don't charge a lot of money and use people's insurance then like pay people for that because it's a different thing. And that's not a bad thing.
• 1:36:49
  It's just not what we're doing here. Exploring that narrative to tell our own stories as opposed to people having told us what is real. And that validation facilitates integration of our emotions into our narratives. It also helps us recognize accountability, which relieves us of self blame and helps us learn to have self empathy, self compassion. Because when we recognize accountability of like, why can't I not get this together?
• 1:37:20
  Well, they're not letting you get it together. Putting accountability where it lies, not as in making excuses, not as in escaping or justifying or whatever, but literally as in, I was a child or I was oppressed or I didn't have a choice and recognizing that accurately. And then the transformation of spirituality into something else where the meaning and importance of achieving relational connection became an avenue of spiritual awareness. You all, when we have a really powerful presentation or a really powerful group or a really powerful something where we are at the same level, my woundedness, I am tending to, your woundedness, you are tending to, in a way that you can't do necessarily in a group therapy setting or in therapy office or in telehealth office, right? Where the power balance is more equal.
• 1:38:18
  Not that it's always the same, right? Like I have the podcast, so there's a parasocial component I can't do anything about. And also we can make it explicit so we can do as much about it as we can. When we have those moments of, oh, my soul was touched in this experience. That's why it's so sacred.
• 1:38:36
  That's why it's so different because that is spiritual, even if we're not calling it God or church or whatever, like spirit to spirit. It is a powerful thing that is part of where we need healing when we have wounds there. Does that make sense? That relational therapy again. He talks the bank calls it, cultivating spaciousness to describe the expansion of spirituality in response to spiritual distress, where we can have curiosity, humility, and commitment.
• 1:39:13
  We don't have to be alone. I was just texting someone this morning where I was like, I'm suddenly realizing and aware how alone in the world I am. I have zero family. My parents are dead. And my, even, I said, even Nathan is doing therapy to be so healthy that he's not needing me, which in some way is a relief.
• 1:39:40
  And also like, where did he go? Except I can't go back to that because it was not healthy for me, like holding all those nuances at once. Right? And my kids even are growing up. So like I'm in a healthier place than I've ever been before because I'm not fulfilling roles for anyone.
• 1:39:55
  And also I'm so alone in the world. So alone in the world. And when I don't have skills or development to connect, to find how to not be alone, like to remember, Oh, there's a whole community there. Or, Oh, you maybe could text people or DM people or message people or maybe post something. But you don't actually have to be alone.
• 1:40:21
  And also doing that to affirm how alone in the world I am. Like literally being willing to hold space with that with myself in a way I have not ever been able to do before, that's powerful. So emphasizing that traditions or rites of passage or conversion may change or different, or how can you adapt them? Or what can you keep, or what can you use, but in your own way that is powerful or meaningful to you. And also altruism, like how do you advocate for others' rights or lobby for legislation or support someone without making it conditional so that you're not reenacting with them?
• 1:41:08
  Things like that, right? Red flags for reenactment, which I think parallel with interpersonal violence and really important for us to pay attention to, seeking approval from controlling figures, mistaking intensity for intimacy, confusing trauma bonding with connection, avoiding closeness to protect autonomy, so like being absorbed or controlled or punishment, over functioning or people pleasing in new relationships, dissociating or shutting down during conflict because you've learned that's danger. Whereas green flags are being accepted in relationship even when you disagree express doubt, relationships that are not transactional or demanding, relationships that are not conditional or conformity or obedience, or dependent on conformity or obedience, Existing with your voice, your choices, your boundaries being honored, affirming you are celebrated for who you are, empowering privilege and power imbalances are addressed directly and explicitly. Safe communities are not based on obedience, doctrine, and uniformity. They are enforced through fear, exclusion, or conditional love.
• 1:42:34
  They are not about earning worth through sacrifice or suffering. Safe communities are rooted in mutual care, not hierarchy. A space where questions, doubts, and boundaries are welcomed. A place to be fully seen, not just spiritually useful, Built on shared values, not fear of punishment. Safe communities mean you can leave and still be loved.
• 1:42:59
  You're invited, not coerced. You're safe to say no. Your full humanity is honored rather than silenced.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
• 1:43:56
  We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about.
• 1:44:23
  Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.