Category: healing | Page 9 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Finding community after leaving a cult or toxic religious environment

After years or even decades of languishing in a highly controlling religious group, ex-cult survivors are finally able to express themselves freely and investigate whatever they choose.

This can also mean that they can be fairly fiery. They say what’s on their mind and don’t hold back. If they see that something is wrong, unjust, unfair or unethical, they want to speak out.

I include myself in this group. Sometimes, it does also mean that we can be unintentionally hurtful or even rude. After repressing our true thoughts and feelings for such a long time, they occasionally all come tumbling out uncontrollably… We don’t intend to be rude trolls, and most of us aren’t, but at times the anger, resentment and hurt that has built up inside us spill out when we are triggered, and we say things we shouldn’t.

When my husband and I came out of the Watchtower, we remained extremely critical of the Institutional Church. However, our faith in Jesus grew exponentially. If you leave a cult and then read the Gospel of John, you will see that Jesus was also AGAINST the institutionalized injustices of the religion of his day. He spoke out bravely against the cruel and hypocritical Pharisees, and as a result, he was silenced, tortured and hung up to die. He could have done his good deeds quietly or not chosen to heal people on the Sabbath; he could have been a people pleaser, afraid of their reaction and their power. But He was not!!!

Sometimes, we want to be brave and outspoken like Jesus, but we lack the wisdom or compassion that He had. We don’t always know exactly what to say, or who to say it to. And people can see us as a threat.

Coming out of any spiritually abusive environment is bound to affect our identity. We are not tied to our past, but to a certain extent, it does shape our outlook on the world. I am also convinced that experiencing such suffering, rejection and loss has widened our hearts, and made us more compassionate people. We cannot sit in judgment on others like the Pharisees and cult leaders, because we know how much that hurts, and we could never shun another human being.

It has also made us hyper-vigilant when it comes to identifying hypocrisy and manipulative behaviours in others. We avoid those people like the plague, and make no attempt to influence or “change” them, as we know it is fruitless. We can love them from a distance, and keep out of the line of fire.

Although my husband and I do attend a church now, we are still hungry for real, honest and sincere fellowship. At this point in time in my life, I am profoundly grateful for the precious friendships I’ve made online. People could say that an online contact isn’t a “real” friend, but I have experienced the exact opposite. At the click of a button, I can communicate with others, either in voice or video calls, via chat or in a group setting, and speak with other human beings who know what I’m going through. I thank God for this precious gift of modern technology, which despite all its downsides, has made it much easier to come out of a cult and find true friendship. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to join our online community: Faith after Deception Fellowship. [Group is no longer in operation and was not affiliated with spiritualabuse.org.]

If you’ve never been in a cult and haven’t experienced spiritual abuse, be prepared for the fire when you meet those who have. The fire is bright, it is hot, it can burn, but it can also kindle some of the most sincere and genuine friendships you will ever have. Don’t be afraid of us… we don’t bite!!!

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When the church betrays us, pt 7

Even after I walked out of that last church, the one that I’ve written the most about in the past and the one that finally did the most damage to me and others, I tried to find another Pentecostal church to attend. I still believed they had The Truth. I still believed that they were right about everything but maybe had just made a mistake or two. Surely the problem was just a person or two. Surely it wasn’t widespread.

I called. I asked pastors if I could please go to their churches. Only one agreed to let me come. I asked the pastor there to do just one thing: don’t tell people where I’m from. I was greeted at the door by a member, “Oh, you must be Mary from ____ church! What happened? I know people there. I’ll ask.” The pastor had already told them where I was from. The gossip had already begun. And then the pastor smilingly told me that he understood that I didn’t want to talk about it, but that he knew some things about that church, himself, and he thought we ought to go out to eat and ‘swap stories.’ I knew then that I would have to leave Pentecost.

It took me 19 years.

What do we do when the church betrays us? I stayed as long as I could. I stayed longer than I should have. I finally left. But the ongoing impact of what happened has remained. I don’t have any answers for what to do when church betrays us, but there are some things that churches and Christians in general can do to help:
Listen.
Believe us.
Don’t pressure us to participate, to join, or to share. Give us time.
Love us. Not with a “You’ll go to hell if you don’t do what I say!!!” ‘love’ but with genuine compassion and mercy.
Provide opportunities to belong to faith communities outside of traditional ‘church.’
Remember that not every wound is visible, and not everyone will say they’ve been hurt. Be kind to everyone, whether they believe like you do, or act like you, or are members of your church or not.

What can we do, we who’ve experienced betrayal? Perhaps the same things.
Don’t pressure yourself, and don’t pressure others.
Give yourself and others time.
Believe yourself. It’s hard for some of us to believe that we really went through something ‘that bad’ in a place we thought should be good, but it happened. Believe yourself.
Trust your instincts.
Love yourself and love others with genuine compassion and mercy.
Be kind.
Remember that others may not see your wounds. You may not even be aware of all of them at first. It’s OK. It’s OK if it takes time to heal. It’s OK if you feel worse the second day than the first. Healing takes time. Growth takes time. And sometimes both come with pain. But it’s OK.
Be patient with others and consider their perspectives. They may not believe like you do or act or dress like you, but there may still be much to learn from them.
Be willing to diversify your friendships. Having friends with other opinions doesn’t speak badly of you, but instead gives you an opportunity to learn more about yourself as well as them.

Peace to you.

When the church betrays us, pt 7
When the church betrays us, pt 6
When the church betrays us, pt 5
When the church betrays us, pt 4
When the church betrays us, pt 3
When the church betrays us, pt 2
When the church betrays us, pt 1

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Cult Trauma Recovery

Enjoyed the post THOUGHTS ON THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE, published earlier today. Have found the book very helpful and return to it often for insight into my own anxiety, depression and the present-day triggers that continue to elicit physical responses from trauma endured during my (27) years in a severely legalistic cult church. It’s been over 20 years since I escaped that bizarre world, and yet the things I experienced so long ago still remain vividly real — as if they happened only yesterday.

Below are a few of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s ideas and discoveries excerpted from the book that have helped me most in understanding the nature of trauma. I encourage others to read the book for themselves.

“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.”

“We have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving and touching.“

“When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.”

“Medications, drugs and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. But the body continues to keep the score.”

“If you want to manage your emotions better, your brain gives you two options: You can learn to regulate them from the top down or from the bottom up. Knowing the difference between top down and bottom up regulation is central to understanding traumatic stress. Top-down regulation involves strengthening the capacity of the watchtower to monitor your body’s sensations. Mindfulness meditation and yoga can help with this. Bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system … We can access the ANS [autonomic nervous system] through breath, movement or touch. Breathing is one of the few body functions under both conscious and autonomic control.”

“The trauma that started “out there” is now played out on the battlefield of their own bodies, usually without a conscious connection between what happened back then and what is going on right now inside. The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery.“

“Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body.”

“How can people open up to and explore their internal world of sensations and emotions? In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements. I ask them to pay attention to subtle shifts in their bodies, such as tightness in their chests or gnawing in their bellies, when they talk about negative events that they claim did not bother them.”

“Our maps of the world are encoded in the emotional brain, and changing them means having to reorganize that part of the central nervous system, the subject of the treatment section of this book. Nonetheless, learning to recognize irrational thoughts and behavior can be a useful first step.”

“Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions.”

“Our great challenge is to apply the lessons of neuroplasticity, the flexibility of brain circuits, to rewire the brains and reorganize the minds of people who have been programmed by life itself to experience others as threats and themselves as helpless.”

“What has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.”

“Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership in the chapters to come. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged.”

“Trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”

“As the previous parts of this book have shown, the engines of post-traumatic reactions are located in the emotional brain. In contrast with the rational brain, which expresses itself in thoughts, the emotional brain manifests itself in physical reactions: gut-wrenching sensations, heart pounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, rage, or defensiveness.”

“The only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”

“Learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical relaxation, even while accessing painful and horrifying memories, is an essential tool for recovery. When you deliberately take a few slow, deep breaths, you will notice the effects of the parasympathetic brake on your arousal. The more you stay focused on your breathing, the more you will benefit, particularly if you pay attention until the very end of the out breath and then wait a moment before you inhale again. As you continue to breathe and notice the air moving in and out of your lungs you may think about the role that oxygen plays in nourishing your body and bathing your tissues with the energy you need to feel alive and engaged.”

“At the core of recovery is self-awareness. The most important phrases in trauma therapy are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Traumatized people live with seemingly unbearable sensations: They feel heartbroken and suffer from intolerable sensations in the pit of their stomach or tightness in their chest. Yet avoiding feeling these sensations in our bodies increases our vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them.”

“Body awareness puts us in touch with our inner world, the landscape of our organism. Simply noticing our annoyance, nervousness, or anxiety immediately helps us shift our perspective and opens up new options other than our automatic, habitual reactions. Mindfulness puts us in touch with the transitory nature of our feelings and perceptions. When we pay focused attention to our bodily sensations, we can recognize the ebb and flow of our emotions and, with that, increase our control over them.”

“Telling the story is important; without stories, memory becomes frozen; and without memory you cannot imagine how things can be different.”

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. on iBooks
Read a free sample or buy The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.
itunes.apple.com

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Thoughts on The Body Keeps the Score

In an online group, someone posted about the book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. They shared how helpful it was for anyone who had been involved in a cult or unhealthy church environment. I am always looking to be able to share information on material that might help our readers, so I asked if anyone would be interested in writing an article about it for this blog. Amy Renee Stangel was one who responded and she submitted the following article in hopes that some might find help for their recovery.

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While I have never read The Body Keeps the Score, I know that the book’s basic premise is that experiences are “stored” within the body’s nervous system. The Christian counseling clinic where I receive treatment uses this book as a staple of its counseling practice.

The body functions in a very intelligent and self-aware way and will “know” things that can prevent brainwashing. As I was growing up and could feel my body being verbally punished through self-abusive religious doctrines, my body knew better and whispered: “You know better than this. You know that God is a good God and that you don’t have to be afraid in your body. You can trust your instincts that something about this is not right.” While I yielded to church and societal conditioning as a child, my memory of my body’s voice stayed buried along with that memory, but the memory came alive upon being unearthed in therapy.

The science behind the idea of “bodily wisdom” seemed at first to be dubious at best and unbibically pagan at worst (after all, I had been told growing up that you cannot trust your body and that it is an instrument of evil, a twisted version of what Paul said in Romans 7); but I could not deny the stream of memories, accompanied by literal releases of pent-up sensations in my body, that came to the surface in reverse chronological order after I began body-based trauma therapy. Many memories I was able to remember at least in the somewhat retrievable past, but many memories I also experienced through the filter of my nine-year-old self and had completely forgotten about for many years. Some have come from even earlier. In my body, I could sense the “knots” of memory that were intertwined with whatever real-time sensations they had been associated with. At times, I would completely re-experience what my personal reactions had been at the time when the memories had been stored. I literally re-experienced those thoughts and feelings.

While traumatic memories can be blocked off by the brain to protect a trauma victim, the body does not forget. Personally, I wonder if God set up this system as a record of truth to subvert systems of injustice and abuse and bring justice to those who need it.

If you are considering trauma therapy (such as EMDR) that may release these stored memories, make sure that you have an adequate support system for your own safety during the process. Although not many people can easily understand our experiences, do what you can to build the best support network you can. My traumatic memories have felt extremely overwhelming at times, and I have needed all of my resources to face them safely. (One time, I had a fully-fledged meltdown and needed to leave work; and the fact that my husband could listen on the phone while I spewed terrified profanity and freaked out…he saved my life because he was available, he listened, he understood, and he was authentically there and didn’t require me to censor myself. I experienced that memory in the context of no longer feeling alone.) My therapist has been on call, and my dad has also been available to listen so that I can feel supported. I have also sought out Facebook groups of those similar to myself for support; not just to process my traumatic experiences, but in order to help me make sense of my life and make sense of my total existence. (We’ll need to reorder the pieces of ourselves left outside of a cult in order to re-knit together the tapestries of our identities. Because of my social anxiety, online groups have been instrumental in allowing me to communicate on my own terms.)

I wish everyone the very best in their journey of healing. This therapy, along with knowledge of comprehensive mental health principles, has completely thrown open the doors of my potential; my life is beginning to make sense for the first time.

Read excerpts from the book here.

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Toilet Training Your Emotions

Weird as that title might sound, we all have a load of emotions to deal with. Especially if you’ve been in a spiritually abusive environment, sometimes the feelings can be very overwhelming. he thing is, you were probably taught that some of those feelings were sins. I know I was.

For me, since the pastor was also at home as my father, and the pastor’s wife was naturally my mother, there was no escaping church or rhetoric. While I love my parents and I feel they did whatever they did as a sincere attempt to instill in me their values, they were wrong about some things. For example, I was raised to think that showing any anger was a sin–for females at least. There was always that double standard. I saw my dad slam doors and spew anger when people crossed him, but it was certainly not something a “shamefaced” woman should do.

I remember several times where I was told as a child and teen “you need to go pray through” because I was angry about something. This shamed me and made me feel that every time I felt anger I had sinned. It follows, naturally, that I would be very attractive to a dominant male with an abusive nature. My marriage was full of abuse, while I prayed for God to help me be more submissive and to learn to pray for my husband. My parents saw what was going on, and they were very upset. My dad had always treated my mother with utmost respect and kindness. Little did they understand the groundwork that was laid when they raised me to be submissive.

I remember crying in relief when I realized the Bible never said not to be angry. (Eph. 4:26, ESV “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”) It was okay to feel angry, as long as I didn’t sin in that anger. What a freeing concept!

All of these years later, I work in mental health. I find all sorts of dysfunctional ideas about emotions, but the most telling issue is when I discover a family is uncomfortable with a certain emotion. For my family, it was female anger. For another family it is sadness. Everyone yells and slams doors, but if you cry, that is weak and effeminate. If you feel depressed, suck it up “buttercup”, because life is full of tough breaks.

Some emotions are just messy.

The following story is an example of how I work with kids to teach them about emotions. Please note the character is fictional, although this scenario has played out in my work with children many times.

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Little Damion comes into my office with his red hair standing up in every direction. With a streak of dirt across the knee of his pants, and the sheen of sweat on his face, I gather he just came from recess. As I ask about his day and settle in for the intervention necessary to his treatment plan, I am reminded of his family.

Damion’s dad is a gruff farmer with no patience for nonsense. He has always worn his cowboy boots in for family sessions, his piercing blue eyes steely above his untrimmed beard. Mom is plump and friendly, with large dark eyes and a vivacious nature, but she is all business too. Old fashioned and unlikely to change, they have a real challenge in Damion. My goal in family sessions is to help them find other ways of disciplining Damion besides just using a belt and yelling at him, but change is not going to come quickly or easily.

My objective today is to help Damion understand that the sadness in his brown eyes is okay to express in words. He has issues expressing any other emotion besides anger, and it is causing a lot of problems in school. He hits playmates and throws terrible tantrums in school, climbing under the desks and screaming at anyone who comes close. I know that if he ever could learn to express the underlying emotions he feels, then it would release this pressure valve and he could get through a whole week of school without his parents being called.

I start out with something most every little boy finds amusing. “Did you know that feelings are like pooping and peeing?”

His eyes crinkle slightly and he half smiles as he shakes his head no.

“Well, they are. Would you say pooping and peeing are good or bad?”

He looks confused. “I dunno.”

“Well, they can be kind of gross and stinky, but they are good. Pooping helps our body get rid of things that our stomach cannot digest so that we don’t have old food in there rotting. And pee? Well, pee helps clean our blood and get any poisons out of our body. What do you think would happen if we couldn’t poop or pee?”

Damion scratches his cheek with a grubby finger. “We’d die?”

“That’s right. If we can’t poop, it can make us very sick because of all that rotten stuff inside of us. Eventually we could even die if we weren’t able to poop it out. The same is true for pee. If we can’t pee…even just for a whole day…we start getting sick. We’d have to go to the hospital and get a machine to help clean our blood because if we didn’t, we would die. Just like that, our feelings are super important because they give us important information about our safety and our health. Just like pee and poop are good because they help us, all feelings are good. Some of them, like poop, might be kind of gross or we might not like them that much, but all feelings are important to help us.”

He nods that he understands. “It even hurts real bad in my tummy when I need to poop.”

“That’s right. It can hurt us in our heart if we can’t get our feelings out. But I have a question for you. Would it be okay for me to go poop right on the principal’s desk?”

He looks shocked. “NO!” He exclaims, “that would be awful!”

“Right, it would be. Would it be okay if I climb up on a table in the cafeteria and just pee all over the table?”

He chuckles. “No. That would gross us all out.”

Smiling with him, I continue making my point. “Well, would it be okay then if I went into the bathroom and put my pee and poop in the toilet?”

“YES!” he shouts.

“Okay. What I want you to understand is that when you were a baby it was okay for you to poop and pee in your diaper. But mom taught you to put your poop and pee in the toilet. Just like that, I want you to know that our feelings are all okay, but we have to learn when and how to show them. It is like toilet training our feelings. Would it be okay for me to go into the principal’s office and scream in her face?”

“No.” he says, frowning.

“What about if I went in the cafeteria and started yelling at all the kids, stomping my feet and calling them names?”

“That would be very bad.”

I nod. “So, ALL feelings are okay. Sad, mad, happy, glad, grumpy, frustrated, scared…and all the others. They are all important to show. What we are going to do today is learn how to show our feelings in a polite and healthy way.”

I pull out my “I messages” game and continue the intervention with him.

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So what we have to realize is that every single one of our emotions are okay. We can give ourselves permission to feel. After all, God is the one who created emotions in the first place. In our journey to healing, it is of utmost importance that we do not allow that old guilt and shame from the spiritually abusive environment to keep us from feeling. Some of our feelings will be very infuriating. At times we may feel like screaming. At other times, we may cry until we feel we have no tears left. Sometimes we might laugh at the ridiculousness of what we were told. It is okay. As long as we can feel emotion we are healthy, we are alive, and we are moving forward.

My therapist explained to me that depression is often caused by stuffing one’s emotions inside and not allowing oneself to feel and to be okay with those feelings–whatever they are. He told me to keep a journal and write down every day a list of feelings that I felt. He explained that new research is showing that simply doing an inventory of our feelings can create new patterns in our brains and can help us begin to feel better over time.

I was so used to rationalizing all my feelings that I didn’t even know what I felt. I googled “emotion wheel” and got a nice graphic that I use to help me figure out what it is I’m feeling when I’m not sure.

The important thing is that we do not stop having those emotions. They are messy and we have to learn what to do with them, but toilet training our feelings is certainly better than the alternative of mental death and stagnation.

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