Category: recovery | Page 13 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Traumatic Submission

Growing up, I was indoctrinated early to know that obedience and submission were godly, while rebellion or disobedience would end in eternal damnation. I probably could’ve told you this in simple terms by the time I was three or four years old.

I grew up playing church with my sister, and a huge part of that was beating our baby dolls into submission during our services. Those poor dolls were so naughty they got a “spanking” about every two minutes. Although, like most children, we probably over dramatized things a touch in our play, we were truly mirroring what we were being taught in our lives, through observation and personal experience.

Recently, I asked my therapist about why, in my childhood, I walked around in a fog all the time. I had no mental clarity about the passing of time, the structure of school, the location of anything outside of my home and my street, and many more things. I spent hours every day daydreaming and spinning wonderful stories in my mind, in which I was the recipient of many wonderfully ideal happenings. I read voraciously, and when I wasn’t reading, I was imagining stories in my own mind. My therapist noted that I grew up where I had very little control over my own life, and made virtually no decisions for myself. In addition, my life was boring; no extra-curricular activities of any kind, no television, no outside influences of any kind. In this sheltered environment, my mind created its own entertainment and ended up developing a very active imagination. Although there was nothing psychotic about this, it did make it difficult for me later in life, when reality imposed upon my dream world, causing extreme disappointment.

As a teen and young adult, I was at a place to fully understand that submission to my father, my mother, my pastor, and my future husband would be my lot in life. At that point, I didn’t fully grasp what it could mean to me. I did chafe at some of the rules in my own mind, but then I would quickly repent of my “questioning” and ask God to help me to submit without an attitude or doubt, because I was taught that it was only true submission if you didn’t’ question or doubt, but you submitted your will completely. Although that phrase I just typed now gives me chills at how unhealthy it was, it was all I knew at the time, and being highly contentious, I wanted to please God.

Off to Bible School right out of home school graduation, I was like an innocent child turned loose in a public park — although we were still somewhat sheltered in the Bible school environment. My unquestioning submission took me right to the top of the class from the very first. One professor commented that this was because I knew how to obey and I took him at his word when he told the class what he expected. He used my work as an example to the others. It was embarrassing, but it caused me to try even harder to please, because I felt I had reached the desired mark of submission in that moment and situation.

Another thing that happened at Bible school was that I was no longer under my father’s watchful eye, and boys were showing their interest for the first time in my life. Some of the young men at Bible School were very nice young men and went on to become preachers, pastors and missionaries. Others, however, were not respectful of women. My naivete was very marked, even in such a sheltered environment. I attracted the attention of a boy who I now feel was probably very experienced sexually and definitely had none of the naivete that I possessed. It is odd how one type of abuse conditions a person to attract other types of abuse. It is as if there was an invisible sign on me saying “I am open to abuse.” Even back then, I mostly attracted a dominant type. There was a lot of pressure from this boy to have sex with him, even though we were at Bible school. Finally, on one occasion I was terrified he was about to rape me. After that situation, I refused to go out with him again. I was tired of fighting him off and begging him to stop short of his goal. Strangely, out of all the teaching we were receiving in Bible school, the one thing he picked up that he liked to use on me was “We don’t have rights. We only have responsibilities.” Another thing that strikes me is that I still remember that statement all these years later, though we dated only very briefly.

Back home with my family and at my home church, I threw myself into service within the local church. I played music, sang, led groups, and used my car to carry people to church. I refused to take a job that would make me miss any church, and I worked hard to submit to everything my pastor/dad preached. I wanted to move out and get my own home, since I had a full time job, but it was frowned upon, so I never even voiced the desire. Instead, like a good Pentecostal girl, I dutifully went to every youth convention and worked hard to dress attractive and “holy” at the same time (a difficult feat sometimes). I was attracted to different young men, but I didn’t have very good social skills and was painfully shy, so I did not get noticed.

Finally, I met my soon to be husband. His family was even more strict than my own. They were in the same religion, but had a lot more rules. His social skills were even worse than mine, so we shyly began to communicate, then awkwardly date (always with a chaperone and never touching even so much as to hold hands–that was forbidden). Early in our formal dating, I told him that, as his girlfriend, I didn’t want to “bring shame on” his ministry, so I asked him to let me know if I was not following one of the “standards of holiness” that he preached, so that I could adjust my life to fit his. Part of the reason I did this was because I wanted to know his beliefs in full while we were dating, but I had also been taught that I should submit to the strictest of standards in such situations. A month or so later, after our engagement, his parents visited, and while they were there, he reminded me of my statement and told me my necklines were “too low.”

I put on the dresses he had criticized (or his family had criticized to him–it all amounted to the same thing) and got in front of a mirror in all kinds of contortions to see why he thought they were too low. Seeing nothing immodest, I went to my parents and did the same in front of them to see if they could see anything. They couldn’t either. I was bothered. I felt shamed and degraded. It didn’t make any logical sense. But, I wanted to be submissive to my husband in my upcoming marriage, so I prayed about it and raised the necklines.

After we were married, submission became even more of an excuse to abuse power. I soon received the message, delivered personally and in my face, that the Bible said that a wife could not deny her husband sex because it was a sin to do so. My parents had never taught me that–but they had laid a foundation of submission that created fertile soil for this teaching. It was my job to work hard to please my husband by running the home, keeping it clean, and providing good meals for him while keeping his sexual appetite filled. At the time, I was working a full time secular job and he was working part time at the church for “peanuts” as a salary. We were mostly living off of my income, and driving my car which was paid for. He was deeply in debt and not working outside of church. I would come home to filth and he’d been home all day. I was expected to clean everything up, do all the laundry, cook us supper, and still feel excited about having sex with him every night….because that was what submission was.

This set the tone for the rest of our marriage. If he said to spank one of our children for something that was developmentally appropriate, I had to do it in order to be submissive. If I didn’t obey in everything, I had a “spirit of rebellion” and I was a “nagging, unsubmissive wife.” If he told me not to yell out in fear while he was driving and I instinctively did it some time later, I was “not being obedient.”

He had told me, and it was my responsibility to obey.

When I had endometriosis that made it very painful to have intimate relations, he became angry that I didn’t want to go through that pain. I had a “spirit of rebellion” and was not willingly giving him his “just due.” So, I learned to grit my teeth through the pain and made a doctor’s appointment to get checked out as soon as possible. Soon I was feeling better, and things went back to the way they were. When he was ready to have a second child, it was really not for me to disagree. I wasn’t ready yet, but he was the “boss” so I felt I had to give in.

This was my life….. and so much more… for many years. I stayed pregnant and had a house full of kids–all of whom I love very much.

Yet things got even worse. Part of his abuse to me was emotional/verbal abuse. He would tell me I was “stupid” and “you don’t know anything.” There were a myriad of other negative messages. Many of them were outright lies. He blamed me for moving things he misplaced, for somehow causing him to overdraw the checking account, for having my fingers in the wrong place when he slammed a door on my hand, and on…and on…and on. Many times, immediately following an episode of extreme disrespect or hatefulness, without any kind of apology, he wanted to have sex. I hated those moments. I wanted it to be about love, mutual respect, kindness, and tenderness. Instead, it felt like prostitution. I felt like his property. He could yell at me, call me names, humiliate and put me down, and then have sex with me all in the same breath, and I had no say in any of it.

When I would complain and tell him how I felt, I would be accused of having a problem with discontentment, being “impossible to please,” or again, “the nagging wife,” the “unsubmissive wife” that was a “blight on her husband’s ministry.”

There were many times I laid in bed with silent tears running down my cheeks while he used my body. Sometimes he would waken me in the middle of the night out of a deep sleep and demand sex. Once I pretended to be deeply asleep so he would leave me alone. He sighed, then began to pray loudly for God to intervene in my soul. I felt like his prostitute; not his wife, to be loved and protected. I remember crying silent tears in the night because I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be cherished as a person and appreciated for who I was.

Going back and looking through my private journals during that time is very triggering for me. Between the heart breaking episodes I recorded, there would be “devotionals” about submission; about how to better respect my husband; about being a better wife and praying for him appropriately. The prayers I wrote down to God, asking him to help me to submit my will and not long for things that I didn’t have are right beside the art I drew to show how my heart had been shredded by the abusive treatment. I so wanted to be saved! Yet, I believed that anything less than total submission to the will of my husband would be displeasing to God, and ultimately cause me to be lost.

As I sat earlier this week in my counseling session and finally shared these events with the counselor I’ve been seeing for years, his response startled me. I had told him there was no sexual trauma in my past. My childhood was highly controlled and strict, but I’d not had any sexual abuse. He pointed out to me that, although it is great that my childhood didn’t contain sexual abuse, there is a history of sexual trauma in my life as an adult.

I responded that I’ve always told counselors “no” when they’ve asked if I was ever raped by my ex-husband. told him “I wasn’t really raped, because I’d been taught I had to consent no matter what. It was said that rape in a marriage was not possible. Maybe I am minimizing what happened to me, but I’m not sure it was rape. I didn’t say ‘no.’ I submitted because I thought I had to do so to be saved.”

The therapist really emphasized to me that, no matter if you call it “rape” or “coercion,” or “dominance,” it all has the same effect in the end…it is sexual trauma. “Dominance was enacted upon you against your will, and that is traumatic.”

It was deeply thought provoking for me. The submission teaching was extremely dangerous and damaging. No human being should EVER have to submit their will entirely to another human being–but that is what submission was to me at the time.

A few days ago I read a chapter in Dr. Bruce Perry’s book, The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog. He shares how his team was called to work with the children who were released from the Branch Davidian group in Waco. These children had been raised in a terribly damaging cult. Although that cult was much more controlling than my early life, there were some key elements that I could identify with. The author commented that these children had been “marinated in fear,” and he goes on to explain how continued fear tactics cause our brains to create too much cortisol (Perry, 2017). He describes how these children had great talent at artwork and other skills, such as reading. Many of them were extremely familiar with Bible passages, but had no idea how to make basic decisions, like what they wanted for dinner. They had not been allowed to figure out what they liked or didn’t like or even who they were individually (Perry, 2017).

In this way, I could identify with these children. In many aspects of life, we never had the option to decide things for ourselves. It was unheard of to even entertain the thought or possibility of being different from who we had been told we were. Our purpose was laid out before us by others, and we were told what to think, who to befriend, what to love, what to hate, how to dress, how to comb our hair, who to talk to, and who to avoid. Like the children Perry described, we viewed all outsiders as “unbelievers,” and therefore, anything they said was automatically suspect (Perry, 2017). Like those children were able to draw detailed drawings to represent their indoctrination and their collectivist society, yet unable to draw a self portrait; my life was also consumed with submission to norms of the group. I could recite chapters from the Bible and explain complex doctrines, yet had no idea who I was as an individual.

This is the trauma of submission.

It is not biblical. In fact, a careful study of submission in the Bible will show that a mutual submission was taught. It never meant literally checking your brain at the door, like I was taught to do. Instead, it was submission in the sense of accepting others as they are and not trying to conform them to your will. It begs the question, how can so many concepts become so twisted in such environments, so that they end up teaching the exact opposite of their originally intended message?

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Resilience: It Is All About Perspective

Yesterday I got the opportunity to hang out in one of my favorite stores, Barnes and Noble. I was slowly browsing through the bargain book section, when I saw a book that caught my eye. It was by Jacee Dugard, and the book jacket declared that it was her second book.

I didn’t even know she had a first book out. If I had, I would certainly have already attempted to read a copy. I’ve always loved stories about the resilience of the human spirit in situations of diversity and hardship. I loved the story of Corrie Ten Boom, reading her books over and over again. I read “A Child Called It,” horrified at his situation, but then read the sequels as well, as the story of his recovery was told. I read a historical fiction book titled “The Book Thief,” about a girl who stole books at book burnings during World War II; and another title called “The Architect,” from the same era, about a man who designed hidden rooms to help those hiding from the persecution.

For some reason, I’ve always been attracted to stories about how the human spirit refuses to be crushed by oppressors.

I think it is very likely that my interest in the topic was somehow subconsciously part of my own resilience in a world that did not make sense for much of my life. Not to over dramatize–for I certainly was never made to drink bleach, live behind the house in a tent, or hide in a crawlspace for fear of going to a concentration camp–but in a lesser sense, the world I lived in did not make logical sense, and I learned to cope with the dissonance.

Growing up, I was probably one of the most compliant children you could imagine. I cried easily, and I wanted to please. Mostly, I wanted to be at peace. So, I learned to do what was expected and to stay under the radar at all times, in order to remain somewhat invisible. Still, there are pros and cons to such existence. I remember once writing about myself and a friend, in a comparison of her more flamboyant rebellious nature and my mousy one. I had my peace, but I did not feel visible or unique. There was a cost to pay for compliance–and I paid it.

In a previous article, I wrote about human development and how it is the work of the teen years to figure out one’s identity. I pointed out then that the cult environment is hardly a place to be formulating an identity–where all are expected to conform, and uniformity is considered “submissive” and “holy.” Of course I would have felt mousy in such an environment, with a very compliant nature.

So the question remains, were we resilient? Was I resilient?

My identity was never fully formed until I was in my thirties and had stepped out of the cult. As a result, I have often felt depressed and hopeless as an adult. I often felt useless and completely emotionally malformed. Feeling like an emotional misfit was part of trying to find my way out. I did not rebel while I was in. I complied. I obeyed. I did my best to fit down in that jar. However, my brain continued to fight against that dissonance–and that, my friends, is where the resilience comes in.

Resilience is a matter of perspective. Jaycee Dugard, you may remember, was the female who was kidnapped around ten years old, and found as an adult, living in a tent behind the kidnapper’s house. She lived there with her two daughters, which had been born to her in captivity, as products of the sexual abuse she endured for years. Her resilience was not in mounting any resistance. In fact, when they found her, she had an affection for her captor and was not fully aware that his behaviors were harmful. Her first book was about those years of her life. The second book, titled “Freedom,” was about her recovery once she was released from the situation.

Bob Pelzer was the “child called It.” He survived through the abuse. Once he was safely removed, years of dysfunctional behaviors and thinking continued. He finally became able to live somewhat normally as an adult, albeit with scars that are unlikely to ever be completely erased.

Resilience means that elasticity that allows a person to “spring back into shape” (Dictionary.com). It means that certain inner toughness that continues the recovery process even when things look bleak and hopeless.

Any kind of abuse can affect a person’s mental capacity. Certain damage is done inside the human brain when abuse is experienced as a child (or maybe even as an adult). There are certain brain paths that may never recover to the point of being the same as that of a child who never suffered abuse. However, resilience is the fact that the child keeps on going even through the pain. He or she keeps getting up each time they are knocked down. They don’t give up, but they keep making a way and developing new coping skills to survive the difficult circumstance.

There is always dissonance. There is always sorrow, pain, and a certain depression. Sometimes people form permanent mental illness, such as Reactive Attachment Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, or other diagnoses that may not be reversible. Yet, the fact that they keep trying is where the resilience comes in. They may not “spring back” to a perfect shape, but they slowly start recovering that design of a healthy human being.

When I left an abusive husband years ago, a woman’s advocate used an analogy that I will never forget. She described resilience as being like a coil (or spring). If you wrap a wire around a pencil, it forms a coil. Remove the pencil, and that shape is maintained. It keeps the shape it had from being tightly wound.

You can think of that pencil as the abusive situation. When the person (wire) no longer has the pressure of that pencil, it maintains the shape for awhile. However, over time, one can continue to straighten out that wire slowly, bit by bit. Although it is hardly likely it will ever be arrow straight without any curves at all, over time it begins to get straighter and straighter as you work with it, until someday it can look pretty darn straight to the naked eye.

The same is true for human resilience. You may not feel resilient in this moment. Maybe you still have a lot of twists and turns in your emotions and your life–a lot of curvature that came from being twisted up in an abusive environment. However, you are completely capable of slowly regaining a different form over time. The resilience comes in the form of not breaking in two, even though at times the pain may feel that breaking is eminent.

You are resilient. You are capable. You survived the abusive environment and you CAME OUT! That is the first step to recovery, and if you are strong enough to come this far, you will make it. So will I.

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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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