Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 748: Religious Trauma and Purity Culture with Audrey Omenson

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Episode 748: Religious Trauma and Purity Culture with Audrey Omenson · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four
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three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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I am at thrilled to How's my guest today, Audrey Omenson? Audrey welcome.
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Thank you so much guy, glad to be here. You are welcome.
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So. Audrey is a licensed counselor based in Houston, Texas. She's
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been working in the mental health field since two thousand and nine and is passionate
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about using semantic experiencing and other tools to support clients in reclaiming their body,
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identity and agency post trauma fosting, particularly in the areas of religious trauma and
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purity culture. In addition to this, being a professional especialty of hers.
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It's deeply related to her personal experience and healing journey. After leaving the conservative
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religious spaces of her early life, she has found semantic experiencing another healing sports
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to be crucial in the reclamation her own body, agency, sexuality, and
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queerness. Are you thanks so much for being here? Yeah? Of course.
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So before we get going shore with the listeners, where you're from originally
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and where you're currently. Yeah, born and mostly raised in Texas. We
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moved a little bit when I was younger, but for the most part,
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all warm climates and southern parts of the US and all of that. So
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and currently and for the last twenty years, I've been in Houston, Texas.
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All right, awesome. So there's a lot here in your bio that
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I want to get to and we will, but all the start for you.
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Yeah, I mean, it's interesting with the therapy piece specifically, it
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wasn't anything that I even I don't think recognized was like a real job I
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could have until I was like in college. I mean, I had heard
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of psychologists and stuff, but it wasn't a thing that I had ever thought
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of. Oh hey, yeah, that sounds interesting. You know. It
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wasn't until I was in like a developmental site class in college, and I
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didn't know what I was going to major in, and I was something sparked
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in my brain. I was like, oh wait a minute, you know.
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And then also in hindsight, looking back on it, you know,
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I think we all self select for our professions for a lot of reasons,
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and for me too, I think a lot of it was also I had
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never really learned how to have emotions. I had never really learned how to
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really own my body or have a body. And so I think on a
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deeper at that point, unconscious level, that that was a big part of
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the draw for me too, was just even learning for myself like oh wait
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a minute, what are these tools? What are these things? How do
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I do this? And in that process then went to counseling for myself for
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the first time and all that sort of thing, and learned a lot from
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there. So in the biom there, you know, there was indication your
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own healing journey. Yeah. Uh, you know, the conservative religious spaces
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of your early life tell us what was going on there? Sure? Yeah,
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So my family was very religious, um Christian evangelical um spaces, you
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know, went to church three times a week I was homeschool Yeah, I
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was homeschooled. So that's a whole subculture, even within the Christian space um
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and so there's a lot of pieces there and a lot of it. You
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know, it wasn't all terrible, right, Like, there's a lot of
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that that was really beautiful in some of my life long friends I've met through
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those spaces and that sort of thing. But there is also a lot of
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very restrictive messaging, especially from a lot of the churches that we went to
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and that sort of thing, where it was very fear based, very can't
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trust yourself, don't trust your body, the flesh is sinful, you know,
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like a lot of those types of things, and also a lot of
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negative messaging around sex, what that's like, you know, all that sort
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of So it was very much i'd say, moving into adulthood, especially in
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my twenties, was this very interesting process of learning how to be a counselor
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and all of that, but also at the same time, like I think,
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learning how to be a more fully a life person just for myself through
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counseling, learning how to like I said, have emotions, know what a
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body is, work through I'm still working through layers of that even now.
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Yeah, so was there a point and oftentimes there isn't a plant, But
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was there a time or moments when there was tension where you were moving out
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of your childhood from that space into a new space where you began to say,
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wait a minute, I'm not comfortable in my body or emotions. How
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did that come up for you? Yeah? Yeah, it came up in
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a very intense specific moment with my parents getting divorced when I was in college
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and so growing up it was a very like this is the Christian ideal.
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You know, if you follow what God says all this other stuff, you'll
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be blessed with this great life. Marriage is kind of the heterosexual marriages,
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the you know, the one of the peak examples of this. And then
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in college, it all just the family system felt really fell apart, and
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that really slammed me into a lot of realities. Also at that time,
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I worked at a church, and that church that I was working at kind
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of within the same year of my parents' marriage dissolving and all of that.
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Also a lot of toxic things within that church culture came out. I was
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laid off. There's like a bunch of it, like so there's several huge
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categories that all kind of went into crisis at one time, and I was
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really forced to like figure out what the heck right like is going on?
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What are my next steps? How all these things that have informed my existential
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framework for how I buy my sense of meaning a purpose, How I make
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sure that I'm okay, how I you know, know how to navigate life
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of all dramatically shifted and fallen apart. And so it was a really it
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was a really big moment and then like kind of intense couple of years after
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that of figuring out how to navigate that What steps do you take to begin
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a healing journey? Yeah, I cried on the floor a lot at the
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time. I had some really close friends that were some of my roommates,
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and they were a huge support sort of a chosen family for me, and
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a lot of that I also started to see that was when I started to
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see a counselor for the first time. Like I had just like finished college
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and was planning to go into grad school and through that started to see a
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counselor. And that was also a really new different experience for me as well.
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And then also interestingly, Art like, I've always been a creative,
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crafty person growing up, but I had never pursued art in any sort of
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like real way, especially not painting. But I remember there was one day
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where like the emotions were especially overwhelming, and I had been on a walk
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and I'd come back to the house and I was just pacing, didn't know
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what to do, Like was so my body was still restless because there was
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so much going on. And at the time, because I was in my
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early twenties, I was poor. I was like, I can't buy art
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for my house. Maybe I can craft something for the wall. But so
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I remembered I had bought this canvas, and I went in the garage and
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I just started throwing paint at it and kept doing it and kept adding to
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it, and by the end it was such a I felt so much peace
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and Catharsis through this creative activity. And eventually, you know, I intentionally
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pay more and I still have it framed in my house as just this reminder
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of like, hey, there's always these emotions can always shift, and there's
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always some beautiful things that can come out of even some of the most overwhelming
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moments. But I think that creative piece that engaging my body piece like that
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was a really important healing thing. And I didn't have the counseling words you
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know for that at the moment, but that was that was a huge step
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in me starting to shift and I sure making art a lot during that time
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and that was a big, a big outlet for me too. Yeah,
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it really feels from from what you're saying this um this this path and challenge
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and struggle to understand oneself identity. And of course you said that and it
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was read in the bioto. Um So when did you start to become aware
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of uh trauma as a counselor or even in your in your education? When
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and how did you respond to it? How did it reflect within you in
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a sense? Right, Well, you know, it's still wild to me
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now that a majority of graduate programs don't have a whole trauma courses are required
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element of education. But you know, I heard it referenced a few times
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when I was in grad school, but always is like, oh, here's
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these here's the list of traumatic events. And you know, if you one
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of these pots, you know the way a lot of us I think think
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about it until we really learn about it and then as I became a counselor,
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you know, I knew, of course some of my clients had that,
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but it always felt like, oh, well, here's this like very
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different thing. I can help them with this part, but I don't know
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if I can do that, And I always added some fear around approaching and
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I think a lot of that was also I had fear around approaching it with
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myself in my own life, and my interest and desire to really move into
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that area didn't really land professionally until I had done a lot of that work
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for myself. And I think a big part of it was I had to
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really practice some courage just with myself of like moving into these traumatic things,
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learning about what this is, how it's stored in the body, what this
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looks like, what healing paths can look like for this, and increasing my
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capacity to sit with that um, with those uncomfortable feelings, with my own
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feelings. Yeah, that that, I think that was a big piece of
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that puzzle that had to land first with a therapist. Did you do that?
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How did you do that? Yeah? I used the word courage there,
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which I yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had UM.
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I've had a couple different therapists throughout my adult life kind of that were different.
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All the ones I've had have been really great, but it shifted depending
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on what I was really wanting to focus on. And within the last maybe
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seven six seven years, especially at the beginning of that time frame, I
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found a really good trauma therapist who did more body based work, and that
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was my first experience. I had heard about body based modalities for trauma treatment,
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but that was my first experience with it, and it was like a
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game changer for me. Um. Yeah, I think earlier I used that
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phrase like I didn't really even know how to like own and have my body,
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and I think that was a big piece that that was how I started
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to learn learn that part just as quickly. I remember when I was in
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graduate school and it was you know, talk about somatics and stuff, and
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people were like, well, how do you feel in your body? And
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I was like, what do you mean? How do I feel in my
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body? I had like zero connection to my body, right, But so,
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I mean, I really appreciate you talking about you know, having the
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cur naming that, the courage to find that reclaim that, and so how
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did you get to a point where you're like, Okay, I want to
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help others in this area. What did that look like for you? Yeah,
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yeah, well I think a big part for me, especially that trauma
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work for myself was a lot around the healing from the religious components of that
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that I had grown up with. And we're unpacking for myself. And at
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that point that I really started at work for myself maybe ten is years ago.
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So religious trauma was a thing, but it wasn't nearly as well known
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of a thing and as it is now at that point, so I had
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started to just like do some reading research, just try to like what even
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is this? What do I call this? And I stumbled across some books
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that were really helpful that gave me some language that like helped me put some
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handles on some of this stuff anyone can call. Yeah, yeah, one
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of them. One of them is Leaving the Fold by Marlene Whinelle. She's
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um like a big pioneer in that area. That's a really that's always the
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one I recommend for people, as like the intro The intro book is true.
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Yeah yeah, whether you're staying in a religious space but shifting what that
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looks like, or completely leaving religion altogether. It's a really important first step.
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That book really covers a lot of the big categories and also honors the
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really wonderful things that spirituality and religion provide too, because it's such a powerful
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way to experience community, a sense of purpose like all this other stuff.
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And so that's part of why it can be like such a foundation shaking thing
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when it falls apart or changes. Um. But yeah, so for that
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like that piece, as I started to learn more about it with myself,
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started to do that trauma work for myself, I started recognizing it showing up
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in a lot of my clients U and I, and I think it's interesting
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that I already had a lot of clients that were kind of in that space
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that while I wasn't intentionally seeking them out, that that match was still happening.
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And that was That was how I started into the religious trauma piece with
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people. Was I had started to get the language for myself, had started
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to do some of the healing for myself, and then was better able to
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recognize it and share some of those resources with other people, and then it
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grew grew from there. All right, let's just pause here for a second
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to thank our sponsors. All Right, we are back in the bio.
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I mentioned purity culture. You talk about that, what is that? Yeah,
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so that's um connected with religious trauma. It's real specific to that idea
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of sexual purity until marriage, and that's shown up in a lot of religious
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contacts. A lot. Purity culture specifically was what this movement was called.
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There was like a big resurgence, like surge of it in the nineties into
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the like the two thousands, where it's like purity ring waiting until you get
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married. Church youth groups would like have classes about it. I sat in
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a lot of those classes. But it's abstinence only. Heterosexual marriage is the
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goal, and anything that doesn't neatly fall into that category is evil, sinful,
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unsafe, bad, And typically a lot of how it's taught has a
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lot of fear based stuff. Like some of the courses I sat and had
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like horrible pictures of what STDs look like like. It was like this very
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fear based thing. And yeah, so it's a lot of and I'd say
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to another big component is a lot of pressure is put on girls specifically to
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be responsible, responsible in quotes for not being too attractive to members of the
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opposite sex because we can't be a stumbling block. That's a term that's used
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a lot, but this like disproportionate amount of responsibility for other people's like sexual
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attraction and that sort of thing. And then with the boys, they would
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get a lot of messages like you can't control your urges, you can't be
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trusted, like a lot of negative like you're just this wild animal and you
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know, like there's nothing and so like both both genders in that context got
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really negative messaging. Yeah, you can't win. Now you've kind of indicated
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that, and I hope I can say this, but you've kind of indicated
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that you're not heterosexual. Yeah, and yet as as you're talking about all
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of these pressures within the religion and you're sitting there as as a young woman,
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I mean, this is you. I can't imagine what this would do
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to one's identity, right, how do you manage that? What's going on?
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I guess that's right. Yeah, Yeah, well that's a great question.
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My therapist and I still talk about it for myself them, I'd say
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a big way I managed it was I just disconnected from it, right,
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Like a lot of what I was saying of not knowing how to have a
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body and not knowing how to be connected with my emotions, not feeling a
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strong sense of agency, especially within dating romantic type categories, feeling very paralyzed
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in a lot of that. I think it was a big part of how
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I navigated that, and it wasn't I would say I was a late bloomer
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in terms of discovering my queerness because that piece didn't fully come to the surface
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until I had done a lot of other work to learn how to really inhabit
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my body and be a body and be a person and allow my desires to
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exist. And I think that was that timing was important too, right,
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Like, I don't think I would have known what to do with it if
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that aware had come earlier. And I also think it's very tied to Yeah,
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learning to be more aware of what my desires are started to inform a
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lot of my sense of sexuality and identity in those contexts too. So when
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people come where someone comes to you with a similar issue, help us understand
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how how do you work with this? What goes on? Yeah? Yeah,
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Well, one of the first things I usually tell every client who's coming
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to me, whether it's purity, culture specific, or religious trauma, or
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anything like that. Is I don't have a secret agenda for where I think
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you should land in your healing process and in what you decide your values and
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beliefs are and all this other stuff, because that's a big part within those
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high control religious settings is there's a very here's the one approved, like defined
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thing that we're a way we're allowed to think and be and behave. And
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even if we pretend to make room performative room for question asking, you're still
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expected to land back in the same spot. So like really making a lot
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of room for that. Maybe it's someone decides they do want to wait,
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but that ends up being their choice, or maybe they decide they still want
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to go to another church but it just looks a little different or whatever.
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Any of that is okay. The important part is really starting to build a
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sense of agency, like I am my own, creating that space where they
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can reclaim those parts of themselves that should Right away, it sounds like you're
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kind of presenting an the antithetical and antithetical stance. You're saying, look,
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there's no agenda here, right, Yeah, Yeah, there's no agenda.
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And also I'm not the new expert that's going to tell you how to live
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your life? Right? What's it looked like to start to build up a
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sense of confidence in knowing what my own voice is? How do I start
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to know what the signals are from my body, from my emotions of what
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boundaries to do I need to have here? What desires do I want to
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pursue, what actually feels good, what doesn't feel good? Starting to build
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up more that clarity of that internal voice, that internal sense of agency that
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hey, I have choices, and I have the power to make the choices.
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I can't control all my external circumstances, but I'm still my own within
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that and really starting to build that. It sounds like I mean to be
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so restricted in you know, feeling one's emotions and honoring one's body and desires
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to have that imposed from the external almost sounds cultish. Yeah, yeah,
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I'd say all of that exists on a spectrum, right, And so the
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more are into cultis the cultish ende you get. It's just a it's a
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degree of how intensely the control is turned on right, right, right,
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And so you can have spaces where maybe they have some harmful messaging, but
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that control dial isn't cranked up all the way and so you feel like you
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have a little more choice, you're not being excluded from the group if you're
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seen as impure, not making the right choice right or like. And then
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you can go all the way to the other extreme, where it's yeah,
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we all address, we wear the same outfits, we do the exact same
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thing, and we don't have any choice at all. Right, So but
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it's all on this big it's all on a big spectrum. And I know
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there are many problem, many different reasons for why people do this, but
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some commonalities of why people come to you in this space. Yeah, Yeah,
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I'd say one is I'll see a lot of people show up when they
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are in that questioning phase. I'd say people show up in a couple different
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phases. So one is when they're still maybe in the setting, but they're
23:03
starting to question it, or maybe they've had questions for a while and it's
23:06
just creating a lot of distress because they don't know how to move forward.
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Because also a lot of times with these settings, either all or a large
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portion of one's community and relationships tend to be also in these religious settings,
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and so you're not just changing churches, you're also like I might lose a
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good percentage of my family relationships, my friendships, Like there's typically a lot
23:32
of categories of life that are at stake when these questions start to show up.
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So sometimes i'll get people with that right. Sometimes it'll be right after
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the change again, where there's a high level of distress, a lot of
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things have really shifted. And I'd say those two things are the most common
23:48
ways people will show up is either in that question phase but there's a lot
23:52
of distress around it, or right after. But every now and then I'll
23:55
also get someone where it's like, yeah, I left that church ten years
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ago and I've never even heard the word religious trauma. But I was like
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reading your bio, I was reading this other thing and I saw this term
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and when I read the term, I was like, oh my gosh,
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that's what That's what that was? Oh, you know, like that language
24:14
right, like the real word for the thing. And so sometimes it will
24:18
be that where it's like someone's been out of it for a while, hadn't
24:22
really thought of it, but then came across something where they learned that and
24:25
it's all kind of came back up. Because I think a big part is
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you know, do you feel like you have the support to actually work through
24:34
some of the stuff right, Because like doing therapy work, trauma work can
24:37
stir up a lot of things. And so I think a big part two
24:42
is that like, am I in a place where I feel ready to to
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do this? You know, you speak from your your experience, You're you're
24:52
sharing your own experience, and you're sharing your experience and working with your own
24:56
experience as you work with your clients too. I'm wondering if you might be
25:03
able to share like an early clinical error when you started working within this field,
25:07
what that looked like. Just one? Yeah, just one? There's
25:10
quite of you, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean I think an early
25:15
error that probably showed up in a lot of different ways and a lot of
25:19
different formats. Was that feeling of once I got out of my depth or
25:29
encountered a quite like maybe a client asked a question or a situation came up
25:33
where I didn't know the answer, that I would in the moment internally freak
25:37
out like, oh my gosh, like I need to have the answer.
25:40
They're not gonna think I don't know what I'm doing, right, And so
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I'd kind of scramble and you know, bullshit a response or you know something
25:45
like that, and that's not really helping anyone. And once I learned to
25:51
be to accept the fact that, yeah, I'm not going to know everything.
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That's fine. It's not my job to be the expert here and to
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have all the answers for this, and in fact, sometimes there are questions
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having another person be like, hey, yeah, that's actually really good.
26:04
I don't know, like that's a thing to explore. Let me go like
26:08
do some research or let's just like explore it right now together, right like
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that actually so much more therapeutic benefits. But those initial fears of oh my
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gosh, they're they're gonna think I don't know what I'm doing, and I
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don't I don't know what's going on, and all of that sort of stuff
26:29
would stick out and get pretty loud for me early on. So yeah,
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i'd say those learning that part was a huge really opened up a lot,
26:38
a big therapeutic shift for me with how I worked with clients. I was
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a big one to the listeners, you know, therapists, instaurvivors alike,
26:49
what would you say to them? To those people who maybe you are identifying
26:56
with what you're saying and maybe thinking themselves, Holy, this is what I've
27:00
been going through. Yeah, I think, don't be afraid of the questions,
27:11
right, just because you've been taught that questions are a slippery slope or
27:18
bad or negative or signs of doubt, Questions are actually just part of curiosity,
27:22
and curiosity opens up so many doors to discovery, to freedom, to
27:27
hope. Right, mum, and let those breathe. It's okay, Right,
27:38
It's okay to have those questions there and find someone that you feel comfortable
27:45
exploring it with. Right, And maybe it's a therapist, maybe it's a
27:49
friend, maybe it's you know, someone new that you go out. I
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mean, you know, I think there's a lot of paths to start to
27:56
find a space where hey, maybe I can say some of these questions out
28:00
out or process some of this allowed. And that, like finding that community
28:06
is huge because I think that again that either the fear of losing community if
28:11
you're like currently experiencing it, or the grief over past loss of community if
28:18
you've already come out of it, I think can be big. And so
28:22
letting the giving those questions permission and finding some spaces where you feel some of
28:29
that support, whether it's you know, chosen family, a trusted counselor a
28:33
mentor someone where you're starting to get let some of that that come to the
28:37
surface. And you know, of course too, if it's getting too big,
28:41
you can find a counselor and they can get you some support with all
28:45
of that. But as it just does a very early starting point that that's
28:48
what comes to mind for me first, I guess today is Audrey Omenson.
28:52
Audrey's the best way for people to get in contact with you. Yeah,
28:56
so it would be my email address, so Audrey at Therapy Collective TX dot
29:03
com. Or you can just go to the website which is that same handle,
29:07
Therapy Collective TX dot com. Okay, and how are you working with
29:14
people? Are you just doing private practice? You doing any online stuff or
29:17
what? Yeah? So I'm full private practice and I am telehealth a large
29:22
majority, and I have a small number of in person appointment options opening up
29:27
soon, but um licensing anyone in Texas. And I also do like consultations
29:32
and trainings and that can be for anyone anywhere, whether it's a therapist or
29:37
someone else wanted to learn more about religious trauma. Purity culture and how to
29:41
work with them. Awesome, Audrey, thank you so much. Love to
29:42
have you back at a later date. Yeah, I love that. That'd
29:45
be great. Awesome. Appreciate you being here and appreciate you sharing your own
29:49
experience. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much. Guy, all right,
29:53
take care, Yeah you too. It is