#25 UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS TRAUMA + Ryan Bohm AMFT

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. I am so excited to have a new guest on.

Today we have Ryan Baumann, which is a therapist. You is a little different of a guest because typically it's a theologian or a scholar, but I'm actually really excited for our conversation today.

And just a little bit of background, Ryan, you have your master's of science and counseling psychology from California Baptist University.

You have a master's of divinity from Talbot School of Theology. That's a quick pivot. And then you are a registered

AMFT, which is an associate marriage and family therapist, and you operate out of California.

So I just feel like we're making this turn from Christianity to therapy. I feel like there's a big overlap between the trauma we experience and kind of our mental health, but also our relationship with God.

So thank you for coming on and providing a new perspective. Yeah. Happy to be here.

I'm really excited to have this conversation and yeah, it should be fun. It should be very fun.

We've got a really great episode ahead. Yeah. It's great to be connected through Dr.

Mark Clark. I feel like it's the gift that keeps on giving that when I have a great guest on, and then

I come back for like, hey, if you know anybody else, it'd be great. We have just been talking about mental health so much in the lives that I've had.

What's the difference between spiritual warfare or mental health, like depression or schizophrenia? And I've talked to Sam Landa about that.

And then even I had a guest on recently, which I pretended not to know her, but I was trying to be professional.

It was my sister. Spoiler alert. Spoiler. On live. And we were talking about, you know, her therapy practice.

And I personally, if I speak from a personal point, feel very much like I'm in therapy when

I'm in church. Would you like, do you feel that way? I feel like God is healing me on a deeper level when

I'm sitting in. I'm just like, wow, I have a purpose and a placement in this world. That's amazing.

And I think that's the goal. That's what it ought to be. Yeah. I've had this thought, and it's not an original thought. I picked it from a professor years ago, but this idea that church ought to be a healing community.

And when it operates well, it inevitably is a healing community. Yes. And unfortunately, it's not always a healing community, and probably far too often, it's a damaging community.

I think that's probably what we're going to talk about today is when it does go sideways like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And what do you, like, the healing parts for me would be the community. It would be like the openness and the vulnerability.

Because I think when I step into, like, I've done a ton of therapy in the past, and I think what makes it effective is being able to, you know, the safe space, and being able to be vulnerable.

And this is something, you know, Maggie talked about on our live of like, when you're talking with a therapist, you are unbearing, you know, the most vulnerable parts of yourself.

And why can't we should feel that way in church? Yes, absolutely. As you're sharing the verse that came to mind is like Romans 8 .1,

there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And this idea is that if you are not condemned, then you're obviously not guilty.

There's been a spiritual transaction. And if you're not condemned, you can show up, you can come out of hiding, that if Christ won't condemn you, then the church ought not condemn you.

The church ought to work with you. Right. So yes, there's sort of built into Christian theology is this sort of idea of like, we can show up as we are these authentic selves in a safe holding space, which is what therapy does.

And when churches operate well, they create that. And that is absolutely therapeutic, that is absolutely healing, unfortunately.

And I get the end where it doesn't work that way, where people find that they were condemned, there was judgment, there was guilt, and kind of these guilt -shame cycles that they can't get out of, and they don't find that healing space.

Right. Right. And our topic today is religious trauma, which is something you have focused on. And you have a very unique background because you were a pastor, and now you're a therapist.

So you have a very curated eye for kind of what that would look like played out of condemnation, which is insane.

I mean, you go to a hospital when you're sick, and I know that's more of a conversation we have. But I do feel, and correct me if I'm wrong, before people would come to church thinking they have to be perfect, uphold perfection.

And if you're falling below that anyway, you don't belong there. And maybe they don't say that outright, but maybe you feel that, and that's the vibe when you walk into specific churches.

Yeah, that undercurrent unfortunately exists. And there's an element of wherever we go, whatever community, there is a social contract.

And people bring in their own baggage, and people bring a sense of, well, I don't want to be exposed, or I don't want to be seen,

I don't want to appear like I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. You see that at a gym. I don't want to lift weights next to the person who's really strong.

I don't want to be at this new restaurant where I don't know what's good. I don't want to order like someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

It's just so innocuous, so simple, and yet these stories exist. And so how much more so in a church or religious community where faith is so important, so personal, and then there's expectations.

Maybe it's not outright communicated, but doing it right, having a strong relationship.

And so when it's really personal, there can often be guilt and shame when there's a sense that I'm not doing it well,

I'm not doing it right. And we know our internal sphere in a way that others don't quite see what's going on.

We always will carry the, oh my gosh, I must be failing. Look at that person, how good they're doing. Look at that person.

They have their lives together. I don't. And so church can sometimes be a place, even if it's not said, even if it's a healthy community, there's a sense of like, can

I really show up because everyone has it together and I don't. Yeah. And it's that double -edged sword.

I mean, I'm just thinking about my personal experience is I just found a really great church here in Hawaii and I've been bopping around churches, so I've tried a couple.

And this one, I feel like I really belong, but everyone there is amazing.

And so there is this like, now I have to, I can't bring down the group, I can't bring down that group average. I have to also be well -dressed and well -behaved and fit in and really absorb into this community or else

I'm going to be the weird one, but all is well. It's a really cool church. Shout out to the house established here.

I'm obsessed, but I'm sure, and maybe,

I did actually, I did feel a way about certain churches that I left where I was just like, oh yeah, this isn't, my identity here won't fit.

And I can imagine on the topic of religious trauma, if your church is your identity or like I grew up in Ohio, that was a small town, you go to church and your church is also like your friend's dad, like the pastor, it's so embedded in the community and like the group identity that if it doesn't fit well, the impacts that that will have on you.

I don't think I fully understand religious trauma if I'm going to be honest, because thankfully I haven't experienced it.

So could you explain it to it simply? Yeah, I'll do my best. And quick caveat is

I think I'm still trying to understand religious trauma because it is so unique. There is a highly subjective element and people are traumatized in religious communities by different things.

And so I really want to be cautious about saying, hey, I fully understand it. I'm going to give you a concrete definition. And this speaks for everyone.

Yeah, I find that I am routinely surprised and constantly learning and developing and growing.

And when I talk with my colleagues who are interested in the topic, we are collaborating, working together to build kind of a knowledge base and pull from each other's kind of wisdom experience.

So I want to share that quick caveat is that there's an element of we're learning and growing and developing in this.

And it seems to be that religious trauma has been gaining more traction over the last couple of years as an idea.

I think that I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but there was a podcast by Christianity Today on Mars Hill, the rise and fall of Mars Hill.

I think that awakened a lot of people to the topic as well and got them thinking about it differently. Actually, yeah,

I absolutely remember Dr. Marc Clark talking about that. Yes. And yeah, we were talking about like politics in the church and how people should act and relating it to the

Book of Daniel. Do you want to kind of do the TLDR on that? Because I haven't listened to any of the episodes.

Yeah. So in Seattle was a church called Mars Hill. And the pastor was a guy named

Mark Driscoll. He started this church in his bedroom, I think, or his living room. And it grew and it became a mega church.

And Mark was a pretty big name. He was part of an Acts 29 church planning group, church connection group.

And as this church grew and grew and grew, it was kind of like an astounding story amongst churches.

He was speaking at conferences I heard him speak a few times. And then little things kind of started leaking out, bubbling out, but it was pretty well contained.

And then the church closed their doors. And there was a lot of what happened with Mars Hill. And so the podcast

Chronicles interviewed a lot of staff that interviewed people that left. Some chose,

I think, if I remember correctly, some chose to be anonymous to make statements because they were afraid of just a retribution. But it was presented as an incredibly toxic, abusive and traumatic culture.

And so, yeah, that got conversation going. I mean, that's a good liftoff point. What does that mean?

Like, what does it mean? Like, to me, religious trauma is an exclusive clicky vibe.

And it is, you know, you fit in or we're going to shame you for not fitting in. But that seems so superficial.

Yeah. So let's build on that. So I guess like the cheeky answer is religious trauma is trauma that occurs in and around a religious context.

Don't do that to me. I know. Sorry. But I'll flesh it out. I'll flesh it out. So when we look at trauma and I kind of for the purposes of today,

I want to highlight that trauma is a distressing event or a distressing series of events.

That now causes clinically significant and like maladaptive symptoms long after the traumatic event has passed.

So let's use our classic example. A soldier goes into combat. Naturally, there's going to be stress responses to being in combat.

After they come home, maybe two years later, they maintain a high sense of like physiological arousal.

They're very vigilant. Maybe there's certain triggers that cause them to relive the the traumatic experiences.

They may be very withdrawn. They may have difficulty controlling their mood and regulating their mood. And these are classic

PTSD symptoms. And so trauma, the religious trauma can touch on these. But we also know with trauma, it can be vicarious or it can be personal.

So I could have experienced it myself. I may have had a near -death experience or maybe

I heard about my my best friend having a near -death experience or I watched them go through it.

And so trauma can be vicarious. Whoa. Absolutely. Like just hearing about what happened to your friend can have that type of.

Absolutely. What? Absolutely. And it'll activate our nervous system and cause our nervous system to kind of show up in ways.

I'll get to that in a second. The trauma can be deliberate. It can also be accidental.

So I may harm someone. I may try to intend to cause harm.

That's a deliberate trauma on that person. Or maybe something happened like a car accident is a great example. I didn't wake up with the intention of getting rear -ended.

Right. But it happened. Right. So there's an accidental component to that that can be very traumatic. Yeah. I would imagine all trauma would be quite unintentional.

Well, I mean, to the victim, maybe. But there's a difference between, let's say, I was caught in a natural disaster versus a loved one abused me.

I see. Okay. Meaning and how those can be interpreted are going to be different. And there's different stories that are told with that.

Different stories that are internalized. Trauma is also on a spectrum. And I think that's one of the things that maybe gets overlooked is you can have like these really intense, obvious elements of trauma.

We can have very small, like they barely move the needle traumatic stress responses. I'll give an example. When I was in high school,

I was snowboarding. I fell, broke my wrist. Actually, someone ran into me and I broke my wrist. Yikes.

Yeah. A year later, I was hiking. It was in the spring. Snow was mostly melting. And on the trail was like an icy patch of snow, maybe about 20 feet across the snow.

And I took a couple of steps and my body froze and I felt pain in my wrist. Yeah. And I pause and go, what just happened?

Oh yeah. The last time I was on snow, I got hurt. My amygdala has paired snow, dangerous, scary.

I took a deep breath. It wasn't steep. I'm fine. And it never bothered me ever since.

But for that brief second, that was a stress response. That was a trauma response. Very insignificant on the spectrum of trauma.

Didn't really move the needle. Didn't really matter much. I got over it very quickly, but that was trauma. Fortunately, I could just think through it and move through it.

Obviously there are more extreme elements of trauma and everything in between. So I really want to highlight that trauma can really be experienced on this, on this section.

Just to play it both out. What would the extreme version of that look like? Yeah. I could never go back to snow.

I couldn't even look at snow. If I touch snow, I'd have a panic attack. I'm constantly like vigilant and aware.

It's affecting my social relationships, all of these kinds of things. Like it could really, like such an innocuous example could really take off.

So imagine if the stressor really is life or death. Imagine if the stressor was physical abuse or sexual abuse or financial abuse, neglect.

And it, let's say it's happened over a long period of time. Let's say it's happened from a trusted person. An authority figure that I value.

Now this can be far more significant, far more extreme than breaking my wrist and just crossing a patch of snow.

Wow. Absolutely. I, I had such insignificant traumas in my life.

I've had a very fortunate life. So going to my therapist and I'm like, my friends excluded me when

I was little, like was a trauma impacted my social situation. But like, I just saw it in my therapist.

I, she's a great PhD. She's amazing. But she was like, okay, let's talk about it. And I'm like, as deep as we're going,

I'm going to talk about my friends. Yeah. I love it. Yeah.

Okay. But with religious trauma, so what would that look like with Mars Hill? So would that be like exclusionary?

Would that be shame? Like, what does that look like? It can be all of these things. So trauma, uh, like religious trauma is going to touch on these things that I just mentioned.

But it, it really, and I mean, all trauma impacts worldview, but religious trauma now impacts these things that are very close to us.

Very sacred, very personal. And it also impacts these things that are very community communal, uh, and connect us and give us identity, give us kind of that social, um, currency that we can have in a religious community.

So there's often a disruption of how we view God, how we view doctrine, how we view people, how we view faith in general, how we view churches, uh, and it has secondary and even tertiary things of how we view morals and politics and vocation, recreation.

I've worked with a number of pastors and they themselves have experienced religious trauma. And now they're like, how do

I do my job when I have these doubts, when I have maybe this kind of guilt shame cycle that occurs is to distrust of the community.

So religious trauma often really attacks worldview and really attacks identity. Um, and there can be a sense,

I've heard a number of times, not always, but a number of times where there's a sense that something was, uh, was taken from me.

I was robbed. I was deceived. I was misled. And now I'm trying to find my way through this world.

And the foundation that was built is either now completely gone or is very unstable.

And so when we look at trauma, one of the things that I think is important to recognize is we, we all recognize that we've all had traumatic experiences and we can get over them.

We can move on them, right? Not every soldier comes back with PTSD. We don't always know why that happens, but there's many who go through horrible things and they seem to bounce back.

But when we look at trauma, we're looking at kind of like a physiological response. And so maybe if there's a neuroscientist that comes on your podcast, they can really flesh us out far better than I ever could.

If you're a neuroscientist, please reach out. Yes, please, please. Um, but the amygdala, the part of our brain, the amygdala, it looks for kind of two things.

Rewards and it looks for threats and danger. And it often is paired to what has happened in the past.

Senses a threat, it senses what's scary and it puts our body, it activates the nervous system into fight or flight mode.

And so I may have had something scary to me. And when I encounter that again, I'm not activated.

I'm able to stay calm and I'm able to stay mellow and I just kind of navigate and go through it. But for some people that threat detection remains really, really strong and just kind of continues in perpetuity.

And so maybe they go to a new church. It's now a safe church. There's friendly people, but every interaction there's mistrust.

So their body is saying, this is scary. This is threatening. Maybe they get physiological symptoms, like their palms get sweaty, their heart rate, you know, starts beating quickly.

Maybe there's a sense of dread. I'm not safe. I can't open up. I can't tell people anything. Maybe there's an incredible doubt.

Maybe there's an overwhelming sense of guilt. So we talked about religious trauma. I kind of want to highlight when we find ourselves in situations in and around faith and in around religious context, where there's a sense of like, okay, something's wrong, something's going on.

Or I'm bad or God's bad or the community's bad. And I kind of want to highlight that element of the body is activating and warning and alerting someone of threat.

And that can't be turned off. That just shows up and becomes overwhelming. And how difficult would it be to like be open to the word of God?

When like your experience with God was someone telling you that you're not good enough or that you're going to hell because of one sin that you've decided.

Yeah. So, I mean, the phrase that person has flipped their lid, uh, what comes up when you hear someone has flipped their lid?

To me, it's a very physical reaction. Like yelling. Um, yeah, I would say yelling, aggression, uh, major defenses go up, um, on attack mode.

Have you ever tried to really be reasonable and rational with someone who's flipped their lid? And if so, how does that work?

You just, I think getting them calmed down is the only option. 100%. There's no reasoning at that point.

So a trauma often can create these like lid flip type scenarios where we're defensive, where we're reactionary.

And until we can calm our body down and reduce that physiological arousal, um, reason and rationality are hard to entertain and to hold.

Much of what we do in churches is we try to present the Bible rationally as a piece of education.

This is true. Let's learn it. Let's dissect it. But if someone is holding trauma and they are in that elevated state, reason's not typically going to work super well for them.

But sometimes what can happen is we sort of try to like hammer them with truth when what they need is actually to reduce kind of physiological arousal.

And that happens through safe place, you know, just getting, getting oxygen, kind of breathing it out means sometimes being grounded and feeling that sense of I am safe here.

This is a place where I can be authentic. What would you say would be the difference between maybe.

Like I said, let's say I'm in church and last night I sinned bad. I did all the sins, all of them amazing, all of them in one night.

And I'm at church feeling horrible about it. And I, you know, I have that conviction.

Um, what would be like a clear sign of like, I'm in church having a physiological experience, feeling horrible about, you know, my sin, my big sins, uh, versus feeling horrible because I'm in a church causing religious trauma.

Yeah, this is so tricky. It's like there's such fine lines between, I think like religious conviction and, and, and guilt and shame and a church that like perpetuates kind of abuse.

But I think one of the ways it's, it's valuable is we, when we do something wrong, we typically feel guilt and we typically feel shame that happens when we're kids, we, we tend to carry that with us, especially those who are intent about their faith.

And when there's that sense of I'm convicted, I've done something wrong. Our theology ought to bring us to, to, uh, the cross in, in, in repentance and kind of the beauty of Christian theology is that we can always go to the cross.

That's what Christian freedom is really about is I can go to Christ. I'm not inhibited. I can show up to the cross.

Romans 8, 1 again, right? I'm not condemned. I have that freedom. Uh, Hebrews 4 talks about, we have someone who can understand us, but did not transgressed himself, right?

That high priest that gets us. So we can come in freedom, openness. And so a church that says,

Hey, this is how our theology works. We're going to encourage that you go to God in freedom, in joy, without guilt, without shame, knowing that the

Lord loves, the Lord heals, the Lord transforms. And as a community, we're going to model and mimic that. You can come to us.

We will be with you in your authentic self. Yes, there might be consequences of certain actions.

There might be things we're going to have to work through, but you are free to show up. But what can happen in churches that really perpetuate religious trauma and the way

I've heard clients and friends talk about it is they feel that guilt shame. There's a sense of, well,

I can't go to Jesus. I have to kind of clean myself up first. And then if I've been good for a couple of days, then

I can show up. And then if I go to the church and I tell them what kind of happened, they will really say like, well, you know, this is wrong.

You know, this is bad. You can't do this. They'll kind of dump on me. And so the guilt and shame of all the sins the night before now are felt again.

There's no healing. There's no reconciliation. Next weekend comes, I sin again. I feel all that guilt, all that shame.

I can't go to Jesus. I can't go to my church. If I do, they pour on more guilt and shame. And this is now perpetuates and goes in circles.

Wow. Yeah. That's where the theology doesn't, doesn't line up. It's hard though. I mean, I understand the fine line because it's not like your church is going to be like, oh, you said that's cool.

Sure. They're going to hold you accountable because we're a Christian and we love each other. And I think people take that to the nth degree of like, they sit on a high horse of like, well, you sin.

So it's my job as a Christian to make you feel bad. So you never do it again. I mean, what was that?

The Westboro Baptist church. I mean, they're like whole thing was telling people how bad they were, but. Yeah. Well, I mean, like they're like, they're very extreme and, but there's a lot of churches that would not be nearly as extreme as them, but they still perpetuate this kind of model.

Right. But I guess my point is, is like the Westboro Baptist church thinks they're doing the Christian thing.

They think that they're loving people by like spotlighting their sin, even though they're doing it in that aggressive confrontational accusatory way where it's like, aren't you sending to, like, aren't we all people here?

And there's that like lack of self -awareness, but still it's, I don't know, it's a fine line between like, I can't as a

Christian just let you do whatever you want and make you feel loved and accepted all the time. Like I have to hold you to this higher standard.

And so a church, I imagine like wants to do that without making you feel guilt and shame all over again.

Sure. Yeah. And this is where it gets tricky is intention and what happens in the real world can be very different things.

Um, I do get frustrated and I don't know if you've heard this when people said like, well, I'm telling you this in love. If you have to give me that caveat, it probably highlights that, you know, you're not loving and I'm not experiencing it.

I've had all you, I use, uh, uh, Mark Clark as an example. He and I have both had conversations where we've called each other out on stuff and there was not a hesitation, not a doubt that this guy didn't care for me and love me and had my best interests and me to him.

There's ways we can do that. There's ways we can fight for each other and work towards each other without having to give kind of these caveats.

Mm. Yeah. And that's a fine line just because you have the intention to do it. Doesn't mean you're doing it. Yeah. And even the intention of like,

I don't know, subconsciously to make them feel more pain about their sin than yourself, you know, lack of humility,

I imagine. Um, yes. Any other things in a church that kind of jump out at you as contributing towards religious trauma?

Yeah. This is where we get to go. It doesn't, um, get into the meat.

It's the meat. Oh gosh. So let's start with some of just like the low hanging fruit, right?

You don't need me to like really go off about this. Right. But when, when we see instance instances of like physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect in a church, like those obviously like very much perpetuate trauma in a church system, but also when churches cover this up and just the extended impact that that has on people, uh, and just the pain that that causes where there's a sense of doubt.

So maybe, you know, I'm at a church and I hear that they covered up something in the past, even though I'm not directly related, that absolutely will affect me.

And I've heard story after story where people have even left their faith because the church has covered up abuses.

Yeah. And so to highlight, that's an absolutely super significant, um, way that the church can perpetuate religious trauma.

There's an experience I've seen pretty, pretty common in my practice is this failure to rally principle, right?

So churches talk about we're family, we're brothers and sisters. We have this connection.

We fight for each other. We contend for one another, all these kinds of things. Someone goes through a crisis and the church doesn't really rally around them.

And they go, wait a second. I thought you'd be there for me. I thought you'd care for me. What happened?

I needed resources. I needed help and I got nothing. And so the belief, they hold all of these beliefs and then that doesn't match reality.

And now the assumption, the worldview gets shattered. And there's a book called Shattered Assumptions that really talks about trauma always, almost always when it's really significant and really impacts the way we view the world.

We view ourself as we can kind of get through this and we have a sense of control, but trauma says you're actually far more vulnerable than you thought.

And people are far less trustworthy than you thought. And so this failure to rally principle is like, wait a second, do

I matter? I don't know if I matter. And then all these questions come up. I have a, you know, kind of a silly story that illuminates this.

I have an amazing support system. My friends and my family are amazing people. So this is by no means an indictment on them.

But years ago we had a medical emergency in my family. My wife had to go to the hospital, something pretty significant, pretty serious.

So I was working, spending time in the hospital and my cat was also dying. And my wife and I are like huge animal people.

So like trying to like keep him comfortable and safe. And what was going on with that? Trying to be there for my wife and naturally all of the responsibilities around the house were failing.

Well, someone calls me up and like, Hey, we heard what's going on. So sorry. You know, we'll be praying for you guys as you know, if there's anything that you need, just let us know.

Now that's like good, you know, a good safe statement because you typically I'd say like, don't worry about it.

We're doing okay. Well, I was, you know, I was drowning at this point. Well, since you asked.

Actually, I really need someone to mow my lawn. And he goes, we'll be praying for you.

And he hung up. I had a great support system and I had friends coming and helping me. And so I, I wasn't left to rot, but I'm like, that, that's it.

Like that experience when, when people feel that in a church, wow, where was I? And so that failure to rally kind of concept can be really damaging and really harmful, especially if they see it time and time again, or if they see the attention someone else gets, and then when they're in that situation, they don't get that.

So that, that's one example. Um, and it's so non -physical and like, like they made a choice.

I have to respect their choice, but still that hurts. It hurts. It absolutely hurts. Um, and for some people it's one and done others.

After a couple of times of that, you know, there's that, that shattered world view. Um, one of the other things

I've seen too, and I'd be curious to see if, if and how you've seen this, but there's a sense of like false expertise that can occur, so pastors have to wear a lot of hats and I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of the job of having to be good at a lot of different skills, but what can sometimes happen is pastors or the, the, the church leaders will step into a domain that's outside of their expertise and they will speak as if they're experts, this is how the world works, science, history, therapy, uh, whatever.

And someone goes, wait a second. That's my domain. You very obviously don't know what you're talking about.

And it now makes that source of authority no longer authoritative and it brings in doubts and you can see kind of how insidious and how like, it's hard to like get a grasp of that.

How could that affect people? But just by your reaction can tell like, Oh, you could see where this would go. I mean,

I've definitely met a couple and that's why we have pre -calls before we get anybody on the live air to have that conversation.

I mean, there's definitely people that have a job and there's other people that have expertise and, um,

I think we're all doing our best and I'm grateful that I get expertise time, but if you,

I'm just thinking like the small town mentality of like, my pastor is my like savior. And if he's not as well vetted as he should be to serve those needs and he starts misleading people just for the sake of like, well,

I've got to speak on Sunday. So I'm just going to speak about this. I can definitely see how that can, you know, misconstrue somebody's expectations of like, well, we can't speak badly about the pastor because he's our pastor or he's our priest or he's our

Pope or whatever. Right, right. Yeah. And it's, it, it's amazing when damage can be done.

You know, my, my wife's a CPA and she talks about how she works with a lot of really smart people, doctors, educators,

CFOs, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and they're really smart and they're really good at what they do, but once they get into the books and they start talking about like the financial, she's like, it is so obvious they have no idea what they're talking about, but because they're so smart, they have a

PhD who would question them. She's like, but they very clearly don't know what they're talking about. And she can kind of laugh it off.

That's her job. She just deals with that. When that happens in a church and we're submitting to authority, it starts to kind of put cracks in someone's like worldview and starts to become potentially damaging.

This, this like lays kind of the, uh, the foundation for like now further abuses and further like elements of religious trauma.

So it may not be traumatic in itself, but it, it, it sets up a foundation for that.

I absolutely feel that I, I I'll share the story not to, you know, speak down about this church because it literally pushed me into this podcast and this happened five years ago when

I was living in Thailand, I was going to a church and like, I was so far from family. So like my church was my everything.

I'm like, this is my family. Um, and I loved the church. I like was so homesick and I walked in and the first thing they said to me was like, welcome home.

And I was like, Oh my God, I'm crying. And I got to a point in my faith where I was like,

I don't get it. Like I get why we're going to church and I get the whole thing, but who's

Peter? Can we do some background on Peter before we start like reading about him? Like what's going on in Corinth?

Like what's going on in the state of the world? I wanted a background. And I went up to the pastor and it was a husband and wife. And I was like,

Hey, do you mind giving some context before we jump into the word, you know, expecting this to be a source of authority and, uh, you know, absolutely.

I want you to learn. That's what I was expecting. And again, those are my expectations, but I was expecting to be like,

Oh my gosh, love that. You want to learn more happy to do it or like happy to meet on the side or something.

And she was like, you should go to seminary or you should go to our Bible study.

And I was like, I am in your Bible study. I'm going to that, but I'm not going to go to seminary.

I'm just, I don't have that interest. I don't have that time. I would hate it. I just want, but I want to know, could you, and she was like, no, she essentially was like, no, you know, that's up to you.

That's cool that you want that. And again, like not her, like I'm expecting, I was asking kind of something of her that she didn't technically have to give to me.

So I can justify in my head that this isn't trauma. I don't have religious trauma. I'll put up that wall that I've only had perfect church experiences, but I can see that if like you go to authority and you ask something very valid of like, can you provide this?

And they make it seem like they can because they've posed themselves as that subject of authority. And then they say, no, you're like, wait, then who does that mean?

I'll never get an answer. Absolutely. And that's what's so hard about religious trauma is that I can imagine someone in your exact situation and walk out of there and feel really rattled and really the sense of like, what is church?

Who am I in church? Who is God? And, and it going to a place where they feel now a constant sense of mistrust, a constant sense of doubt.

It sounds like you were able to work through it. You're in a good church now. You know, and then, but I could, I could hear someone, I can imagine someone having a very different reaction and that's hard because it can be so subjective.

Everyone's experience is so different. Yes, absolutely. Um, so kind of like what

I was just saying, as far as like, that's not religious trauma. I'm perfect. Like, are there any other misconceptions about religious trauma that we should be aware of, of like what it is and what it isn't?

Yeah. Yeah. Um, definitely, definitely. Yeah. I want to kind of speak into that. But I, I think to, to segue into that question,

I, I want to touch to actually on just a few more elements of things churches can do that are traumatizing.

Cause I think that feeds into the misconceptions and this is, I saw this when I worked in the church and I see it pretty frequently now outside of the church, is there are certain doctrines that just how the church talks and engages has created a tremendous amount of damage.

And I'm not just talking about people who are walked away from their faith and are now angry. I'm talking about from people who are in the church still and are wanting to follow

God, wanting to have, you know, a close connection with their faith community. Um, but the topics of, of sex and sexuality and gender, uh, and I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole cause

I don't want you to get nasty, nasty emails. Let's go down head first. Here's some of the messaging that occurs in conservative churches.

Let's, let's, I guess we'll focus on like on sexes. Don't you dare have sex before you get married?

Don't you dare think about having sex before you get married? Don't go there. And so you have some couples who they're dating and they're able to keep that line and then they get married and now it's like, okay, go have sex.

But for them, there's been so much guilt, so much shame. And that guilt and that shame has worked to kind of create boundaries now that they can't just like, oh, now this is okay.

It's been internalized for 20, 30 years and now they're just supposed to go have sex.

And the amount of couples that have talked about how difficult and how much guilt and shame it is, even though they didn't have sex before they got married.

And then you hear, you know, guys like try to bring it up in church and they're sort of laughed off for women bring it up and they're just kind of told, well, you just need to have sex with your husband or he'll cheat on you and that's your responsibility.

And so it was tremendously significant as creating guilt and shame. Now they're married and the messaging from the church perpetuates more guilt and shame.

Oh my gosh, yes. Yes. I've literally listened to a podcast episode on a couple in the faith. It was a great like winning story, but they were like, we kept that line our entire relationship.

And then wedding night came and we had no idea what to do. Yeah. You go from do not even think about it to, okay, have as much sex and babies as you can once you're married.

Like, and you as a psychologist and a pastor, what's the solution?

Because, you know, I think from a secular perspective, it's like, well, then you should be talking about sex.

You should be having sex, you know, test the car before you drive it. But that's not the Christian worldview. The Christian, in my opinion, and what

I think you'll say, but correct me if I'm wrong, is that we should be talking about sex in church and not put this like hush hush, like filter to tone it down.

But talking about it and how amazing it is because God created something so beautiful. So when the night comes, it's like,

I'm, I love it. I'm prepared for it. I haven't experienced it, but I feel safe enough to, you know, it's funny.

And part of the messaging is interesting. I had years ago, a mother came up to me and she was like,

Hey, I think it'd be good to do like a series on sex because there's a lot of like misinformation out there.

And I was just like, actually a little, a little bit disbelief. I was like, do you think like kids are like Christian kids are having sex because they don't know what they've heard their whole life?

Like, it's not for a lack of knowledge. They know. And how often like you say,

Oh my gosh, like I sinned because I truly didn't know better. Like we know.

We know. And there's a lot of scholars that talk about, you know, why do we sin so much when we know more than any generation in human history, we have more access to church history, church tradition, church theology, and access to the scriptures.

There's generations of Christians who couldn't read their Bible because it was in a different language or they couldn't even read it.

It's not for a lack of knowledge. And so, yes, we want to teach, but I would argue is you want to create churches to be places of safe attachment around the topic so that when it comes up, people can be open and authentic.

And I think there's a heavy element of, yes, teach Christian theology, teach the values of, but we tend to do better.

People tend to be more motivated when they're motivated towards something as opposed to motivated what not to do.

So talk about the beauty, the value of sex. Talk about what a healthy sex life looks like. Talk about anatomy.

Talk about how our bodies work. I've talked to too many Christians. They're like awkward and they're embarrassed to say like just physical anatomy words.

Things that you're going to contend with on your wedding night. Can we talk about this? Not to be vulgar, not to be gross, but we have bodies.

We have to contend with them. To give people kind of information, yes, that's valuable, but to do so in a safe way where there's this value there.

Teach people about just like the consequences, and I really have to be careful. Try to avoid doing the way that perpetuates guilt and shame.

Say, why does this matter? Why do we have the theology that we have? What could be the value?

Also be open and honest with the points that we say we may struggle with this. We may struggle to understand why

God designed it this way. Why shouldn't we be able to test the car before we drive it? If that's something that you're like,

I don't have a good answer to that, tell your people that. Here's what the word of God says, but I personally struggle with this.

This is hard for me too. Be real, be open in that. Then also two models of restoration.

Young people, even who are pious about their faith, are going to cross physical boundaries, and they're going to have sex, and then they're going to go hide, and they're going to have guilt, and they're going to have shame, and they're going to hide.

Christian theology says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Talk about models of restoration.

Talk about what happens. How do you grow in this? How do you struggle in this? You know, it's interesting.

As you look at the early church in Corinth, and Paul identifies them as Christians, but then you look at some of the sins and some of the things they engage in, and I think by a lot of churches standards, you say, well, they're not

Christians. Like, for example, having multiple gods and worshiping idols. That was something that people in the church of Corinth were struggling with.

Paul still identifies them as Christians, but recognizes they're in process, and we're all in process.

And what is it about sex where it's like, well, that's the unforgivable sin. Don't you dare do it. If you have sex, you're now out of the church.

And I've talked to people. Perhaps you have as well. They're like, well, I crossed that boundary. I guess I'm out.

And so we talk about how to kind of solve this problem. Part of it is like, we have to have the conversations.

We have to educate, but education only goes so far. Create a safe place where people can succeed and be celebrated, where they can fail and be nurtured.

Yes. It makes me think of that Hillsong documentary. I've heard about it, not seen it though.

Yeah. And I feel like we've all heard about it. And then Hillsong was like, best church ever, concert experience, loved it.

And then it had that steep downfall of like, well, the pastor cheated on his wife. So it's actually horrible. I watched that documentary because I was like, that's crazy.

And I mean, long story short, Hillsong became a corporation. So there's like, you kind of lose that focus when like the top dog is focused on money.

But the head pastor who fell from grace, he had an affair and then he left the church, dropped off.

And then you see him later in the documentary come back, and he is so clearly humbled. He is so clearly regretful about what he did.

And I feel like when you don't really investigate and feel for this guy, you're like, oh, see?

What kind of God and church? He cheats on his wife. But he sinned in a way that we all probably,

I'm not saying we'll all cheat on our wives, but we all, in some way, you will cross a physical boundary.

And I think when you're in the spotlight and obviously under spiritual warfare, he's leading people to Christ. He clearly felt bad, but it seems like in the lens of religious trauma, he was absolutely shunned from his community.

And he had a global community. And the response was, he went to a different country.

He literally had to flee his home. And now he lives in exile in the swamps of Florida. He went from like, what kind of community didn't uplift him and understand that the human condition is a sinful one because -

Sure, yeah. I do want to make a distinction between a congregant and someone who's a leader.

And there are very clearly different expectations. And Lucas talks about there's different expectations.

And so I do want to highlight that. There's also, I think, elements, and this is not my domain, but when you have a global community and a global movement, it's certainly going to be different.

If I have like three or four friends and I screw up, it's not going to be as public and I can go to them and they got my back.

That's different if I say, hey, I'm a pastor to now a million people. There's for sure distinctions there.

I don't know what that small little community around him did and how they engaged him. I don't really know what his repentance was like and how he engaged, what that process was like.

And it's hard to say from a documentary, you know? Of course. But I think there's an element of to really highlight that there are people who aren't in leadership positions, that they are getting shamed and they are getting shunned.

And that's why I think my first level of concern, because they're far more vulnerable. They weren't benefiting like maybe like a leader was.

And I'm not saying I'm not trying to shame him. I hope there's true restoration. I hope there's true repentance. And I've worked with people who have done really horrible things in life.

And I truly believe that they were very repentant and wanted to heal. And I've worked with people who gave me lip service and I'm like,

I'm going to do everything I can to help you, but I don't believe you actually want to be helped. Yeah. I don't know about the hillside past or hillside.

There we go. Hillsong. Hillsong, sorry. We have hillsides and hillsongs in our community. And so I always get those mixed up.

That is a good point. That one is benefiting. One has resources and one has stepped into that role.

I think though, I have so much sympathy for people that are closer to God and then they fall.

Because it's like, to me, I don't want that to reflect badly on my God of like, oh, it's a sham because even the holiest of holy sin, it's like, that's why they said is because like the spiritual affliction got so much stronger.

Like, at least that's what I say to myself. But yeah, exactly.

And if I'm attending a church, I'm not getting paid to go, I'm not performing or leading people to Christ.

I'm truly coming there to learn more about Christ and I fall short. Isn't that par for the course? Yeah, 100%.

And I think part of the problem is in some of the messaging and going back to where we started in the beginning, there's an expectation that we have to be perfect.

If our churches were kind of centers of like, we're in this struggle together. And if pastors more often said, hey,

I'm pointing to Jesus as I'm walking the same road as you. Here's where I stumble. Here's where I struggle.

Here's where I fail. Then I think maybe how the secular person would view church would be a little bit different.

But when there is these kind of can be very rigid expectations. Then when there's failure, there's often kind of like glee.

Like, look, we knew there were frauds. But if you kind of right from the get go, I say like, we're just like, trying to like, wait, do the mud together.

And it's humility. People tend not to like root against humility. They tend not to root against people who are like,

I'm struggling. And here's my religious values. And here's my doctrine. Here's how I try to work through this. But yeah, I'm not perfect.

But the facade, the presentation, that those are all the things that really like contribute to religious trauma, because they buy into that.

Yeah, do you? Yeah, as a therapist, with your patients who do experience religious trauma, how does that spill into other parts of their life?

Like, what is the... Gosh, everywhere. Go ahead, finish the question.

Yeah, sorry, I was just... No, I mean, that is the question. That is the question. You know,

I have... Everyone's different, of course. I think the question of identity is the biggest one is like, who am

I now? And I have clients who they are angry at Christianity, have walked away from Christianity, and they have no intention to come back.

And when I work with religious trauma, that's one of the questions I ask is, do you want to reintegrate into a faith community?

Do you want to integrate into a new faith community? Are you done? Where are you at in this process?

And my goal is to walk with them and be with them wherever they are at. But across the board, regardless of how they want to view and think about faith, there's a sense of like, who am

I now? Who is God? What's, you know, kind of silly, but like, what's the meaning of life now?

Those are damaged. And people can experience it with vocation. Like I said, with some of the pastors that I work with, they're like, how do

I do my job now? Do I want to do my job? For others, it's like, do

I even want to go to church? For some clients, a lot of the trauma is regarding their sex life.

And they're not even a Christian anymore. But there's a sense of like, I've heard this messaging my whole life, and there's so much guilt and shame and I'm struggling to work through that and walk past that.

For others, there's so much doubt and almost paranoia when they're interacting with Christian people because they've been hurt by Christians so badly.

So yeah, it can show up in so many ways and in really significant ways. And going back to earlier, I talked about that nervous system gets activated.

This shows up in their daily life where there's a sense of like fight flight in situations where maybe you and I don't experience it, but someone else would because of the pain and the hurt they've felt.

Kind of like your wrist when it like seized up. Would it be as subconscious as like,

I experienced religious trauma, just the idea of committing my life to a God that makes me feel like crap, makes me freak out because now like,

I don't want to feel like crap. I don't want to like question like, am I a good person? I know I'm a good person, even though a church told me I wasn't for years.

Is it as subconscious as like, you're sitting around with friends talking about your purpose in life, your goals, your job, your family, like you're not even talking about church at this point, but just like broaching the idea of purpose.

Now you could still have that physiological freeze up of like, last time I discussed this, I was told I was the worst of the worst.

So now that I'm in a completely different setting with friends, talking about my job, my corporate job as an accountant, whatever it is,

I'm still now having that response. It's that far reaching. It can be. So I, as a therapist,

I'm an existential therapist. And so kind of one of the values and one of the keys is recognizing that part of life is anxiety and this element that we will feel anxious.

So a lot of the work that I do with clients is reframing anxiety, not as like this pathology that a doctor said, hey, you have anxiety, here's some pills.

But to recognize what is anxiety, like conceptual, let's understand it. And then now kind of start from within the body.

What's going on in your body when you feel anxiety and connecting to the bodily experience, languaging and externalizing the bodily experience, seeing how it shows up and then kind of working on that to reframe it and develop it.

But to not pathologize anxiety, but to recognize it. And so often we are very disconnected from our bodies.

When I talk with physical therapists and I have my own physical therapist, I have a great relationship with her and I've asked her questions and we get to, you know, kind of pick each other's brains.

She'll ask a client like, hey, I'm going to, you know, ask you to like flex your right quad muscle and then flex your left quad muscle and which one feels weaker.

And they can't even flex the muscle. She has to train them and really help them to like hone in on some of the motor development.

That's how disconnected we can be from our bodies. And so, so often I work with a client, even outside of religious trauma, really kind of working through what they're feeling in their bodies and the anxiety that they're feeling.

And they go, I've never thought about it in these terms. I've never felt this. I've never tuned in. And so it can be really great when a client's like, okay,

I'm feeling this in my body. I'm noticing this. Oh my gosh, it's showing up. I'm talking about meaning and now there's guilt here. There's like an anxiety here.

There's maybe a sense of depression that's kicking in. I just like, I lose kind of the will. When they're able to articulate that, amazing.

We're already ahead of the game. But a lot of the work is just getting someone to even like hone into what's going on.

Maybe you've talked to someone who's like cut out something like in their diets that it wasn't healthy. And they'll tell you like,

I didn't even realize I felt like crap for the last six years of my life. And I feel so much better now that I've cut out whatever ingredient.

It can be very similar with a religious trauma. They don't even know because they're disconnected from their body.

They're having these conversations and they don't know what's going on. Oh, yes. And then you go to like a church that is humble, is, you know, leaning into trust and, you know, where they're at.

And they're like, whoa, this feels different. If you can even get them in the door, that's a win. But yeah. Okay. Now that we've talked about the problem itself, let's talk about, you know, how we heal from it.

So yeah, what are the steps to begin healing? Are there therapeutic approaches you're using?

Or, you know, is it as simple as leaving that church? Like, how do you move on? Yeah, definitely. Well, definitely get out of it.

If you identify you're in a traumatic place and a place that's really perpetuating trauma, getting out of that would probably be a good step.

And that can be very difficult in and of itself, because you may lose all of your social circle.

You may lose where you do recreation. You may lose where you volunteer. You may lose your vocation, like if you work at a church.

Yikes. Yeah. So this is where I really don't want to say just throw caution to the wind and leave.

It may not be that simple. And that's where an important support system may need to be, like, developed.

And that may be hard because your support system may be in the church. So I really want to be empathetic to these kind of people.

And this is where, obviously, I'm a therapist. I believe in the value of therapy. And so this is where it could be really good working with a therapist and really slowly working to develop and build an exit strategy and to recognize that it's not always easy to exit.

So that's some caution there. Yeah. So let's say somebody does, because you're right. Like, if I lost my family and I lost my friends and I lost my job and my social circle, you don't want that.

Maybe I can just deal with a little bit of shame, you know? But let's say somebody does get out and they get a therapist. What are some techniques that you use?

Yeah. So I'm EMDR trained. Love it. Love EMDR. We can do

EMDR. I'm also an existential therapist. And so that's... What is an existential therapist?

So it's a modality that's rooted, actually, more in a philosophy that now kind of lends itself to clinical practice.

And so there's some key themes. And I don't want to bore the audience on it, but the fact that we exist and we have to contend with it.

And so there are key themes of what it means to exist. Themes like meaning, purpose, life, death, anxiety, and to work through those.

When we avoid these kinds of things, this often lends itself to negative mental health outcomes.

So a kind of very brief synopsis of that. But there's a lot of meaning -making in existential therapy.

One of the founding kind of fathers of existential therapy was a guy named Viktor Frankl. He was an Auschwitz.

And he talked about when he could work through this why bother living through this humiliating and punishing environment that gave him motivation to live.

He observed that people who had a why were able to endure the most horrific of events.

And people who lacked a why, they unfortunately passed away in the concentration camps.

And so this is kind of a big key is discovering and holding a why. And so when we're able to look back on our trauma and look back on our stories and find meaning and purpose and kind of new direction, that can be very therapeutic as well.

So that's an approach that I'll use it with a lot of my clients. But the reality is, if you find a therapist and you fit with them and you connect and they are safe and you trust them, that is therapeutic.

Absolutely. That's so valuable. If they do existential at EMDR or narrative or whatever, be like, this is my person and they know me and they can hold my story, that's valuable.

Find that therapist. Really interesting stuff, Brian. I'm just thinking if you leave religious trauma and maybe you don't have therapy, whether you don't believe in it, whether you can afford it, whether it's just not available to you, are there other ways to go about this and taking into account the wrong direction of new age and going the complete opposite of I was worshipping

God and now I have crystals and I'm talking to mediums and chakras and Reiki.

I've seen a lot of that because you're like, well, Christianity doesn't work. So I'm going to go to this other thing

I can control. And then you're totally led astray. I'll give an example of if you go to a doctor and you're like, this doctor is not my doctor,

I don't like this doctor. More often than not, you don't give up going to see a doctor when you're ill or sick later.

And so if someone says, hey, Christianity is not for me and they walk away. Okay, that happens.

I get that. I want to respect their freedom. But I always want to caution someone. If you're at a bad church that doesn't speak to all churches.

Now, I really want to do a caveat. If someone is like, hey, I had a really bad experience, a very traumatic experience at this church,

I would never say, well, not all churches are like that. I wouldn't want to invalidate their experience. Go next door.

Yeah. Wouldn't want to invalidate their experience. Their experience is real and I hear them. I'd want to sit in their pain. But as you kind of work through the pain and they're kind of more open,

I always want to highlight one bad experience doesn't dictate the rest of this world. Are you open to kind of exploring?

But what are things to do that safely? What are things to look for? What are themes to be on the lookout for?

And so I think that's part of that healing. If you're like, hey, I had a really bad experience. Maybe Christianity is still for me. Great.

How do we now integrate and hold that? And look for churches that have hero worship. Look for churches that are conflict avoidant or punishing.

What's hero worship? The senior pastor can do no wrong. The senior pastor is kind of the model, the authority figure.

You don't question. You don't doubt. If there's conflict, it's your fault. Look at the book I just wrote.

All that kind of like the cult of personality kind of stuff. Got it. Yeah. What else? Because you were mentioning conflict avoidant.

Yeah. Churches that do bad conflict, they tend to perpetuate religious trauma.

Kind of like that Mars Hill. They didn't talk about it. Well, they just kind of... If there was a conflict, they just sort of excommunicated people.

Yeah. Do they use theology to make you feel bad about yourself? It's not hard to use the Bible to make someone feel bad about themselves.

No, it's not. Do they perpetuate kind of guilt and shame? Do they take responsibility? Do they allow you to ask questions?

Often, this was a kind of something I had learned when I was a pastor was the degree to which a church or the degree to which a pastor handles conflict is the degree to which you can measure spiritual maturity.

Anyone can look super righteous when everything's going well. That's easy. What's it like to love someone who's upset with you now?

Right. What's it like to hear them and care for them and be concerned for them? What's it like to apologize? Can you do that?

I think those are things to look for if you want to integrate. Can the church do this? That will be healing if a church can do that.

Having a good support system, not jumping into a church by yourself, going with friends, discerning together, thinking, talking together.

Hey, what are we noticing? How is this for us? Is this a good place? Do we got to bail? Is this actually healthy? Can we integrate? And then integrating slowly.

And so, yeah, of course, a therapist can help with that process. But if you can't afford therapy, don't want to do therapy, whatever, then there's some good questions you can ask with trusted friends.

And then I will say this. There's just some common factors that are just helpful for us always.

Getting a good night's rest, eating well, exercising, getting into nature, playing with animals.

Oh, we're in therapy now. We're in therapy now. Petting your cat isn't going to cure religious trauma or anything, but these are helpful therapeutic things.

And so I would encourage if any listener is like any kind of trauma to say,

OK, what are the healthy things I can do that are just a little bit therapeutic in my life? And so these things are just very valuable to do.

They are therapeutic and help the deeper work, whether it's in therapy, whether it's with your friends, kind of trying to discern or work through.

And then one of the other, like, I think the last kind of things is if you think it would be helpful for you, write out your story.

Write out the wrongs that you experience. Put it on a piece of paper. Honor that.

And if you have trusted people, read that with them, share that with them. Like your story matters. What happened actually happened.

Don't be so quickly to gloss over it. Hold it. Recognize it. It happened. And that can be a good first step in taking some healing steps when you own and acknowledge what had happened to you.

100 percent. And I think it is a reminder. I think it was it must have been

Mark Clark. What a guy is. I think I asked him, like, well, how do we, you know, be a good

Christian? Like, how do we apply the principles of the Book of David to our life as Christians? And he was like, just be a good

Christian, you know, and people will see that and want to be and want to know your God and they'll want to be a part of your life.

And I, you know, by no means experience religious trauma, but I definitely struggled with my own sinful desires and drawing near to God.

Like for me, this podcast has been incredible because like I'm not that old, but I definitely like lived a decent amount of life without being close to God.

So doing the podcast brought me near to God, like it feels like late in life and especially being raised in a

Christian household that just feels late. And what perpetuated the lateness was me being like,

I can't help that I wanted to do all these things in college and all the things before. And I can't help that I didn't want

God and to spend time with God. And I felt bad about that, but it got to a point.

And this is just like what my sister did for me, I think would help a lot of people is she was like, like I couldn't talk about God without crying because I felt so unworthy.

Because I was like, I haven't done any of the work. Who am I to approach God now and be like,

Hey, late, but like, will you help me? Will you provide for me? Will you protect me? And I was going to my sister about it.

And she was, you know, in her faith journey. And she was like, listen, Cass, if it's not giving you peace and it's not giving you love, then it's not from God.

And I say that now in my journey being like, God isn't all butterflies. And like God will for sure condemn you and convict you because he wants what's best for you.

He loves you as a parent. You know, no good parents going to give you whatever you want. But God does love me.

And God doesn't want me to feel like I can't approach him. And God wants me to feel loved.

He doesn't want to. Justin Gerhardt, we just did an episode from Holy Ghost Stories.

He puts this well, he's like, God wants to shine a spotlight in your life to find the things that you're shameful about so he can love you through them.

Not so he can broadcast the wrongs of your life, but so we can be like, what's going on? Let's find a solution together.

And knowing that anything else other than like love and peace to an extent is demonic affliction keeping me from God, making me feel shameful, keeping me apart.

I mean, this is my experience. So it could absolutely, this is just me. I'm not saying that this is truth, but you know, that shame kept me from God.

That was the devil. Whereas like once I was like, no, God loves me and wants to hear from me. I was going to him about every problem.

So that was just something that helped me. Cool. Cool. Yeah. I'm glad that works for you.

Yeah. Right. That's like the therapist. I'm so glad that works for you. Love that for you.

Yeah. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that though. Yeah.

I mean, I think that that's the best I can do. And maybe that's just like the gateway drug to like, yeah, no,

God loves you. But maybe stop doing this. You know, I think there's like that key element of, you know, you talked about, like, you know, maybe

God does condemn you. I was like, I think I still come back to, there's a big difference between condemn and kind of push and motivate and kind of coach.

You know, so I'm a, I'm a rock climber as a kind of one of my main hobbies. Nice. Often there's this discussion with climbers about when you see other people at the crag doing something incredibly dangerous.

What do you do? And there's a lot of people who are like, not my business. I'm just going to walk away. And that's hard for me.

And, and, and it's hard for a lot of other climbers where we'll like, we have to speak up because I don't want to watch someone die in front of me because they're doing something reckless.

I don't want someone to die regardless, because they're doing something reckless and we can fix it. And you may be confrontational and you may be hostile.

Because it's such a dangerous situation. You need to interject in. Really good example.

This is life and death here, potentially. And then afterwards is a little bit like that. Hey, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to come across as like hostile. But that was really scary. And I didn't want to see anyone get hurt.

And I think to recognize that a loving God is more apt to work in this kind of way.

The loving God is apt to get our attention. And to use the mechanisms necessary to get our attention.

But I, I would be really cautious about saying it's condemning. It's, it's loving.

It may be an aggressive love, but it's loving. It's restorative and reconciliative.

And where religious trauma so often occurs is when it is condemning. It is guilt.

It is shame. It's a robbery of freedom. And, and, and just kind of a subjugation and keeping someone down and keeping them in this cycle.

And so I think those are key distinctions. And I think that some of the language is important to make and to understand.

Is that God may try to get my attention. God gets people's attention. He does so in many different ways.

We see that biblically. And I think a lot of people have experiences that, that suggest that. But in religious trauma, it's condemnation.

It's guilt. It's abusive. It's power. It keeps kind of this, this power dynamic that says, we're going to keep you down.

We're going to keep you stuck in the cycle. And so I think that's a key distinction. Yeah, really well put.

I love the rock climbing example. Wow. I told you these hours fly by.

Yeah. It flew by. It was five minutes and now we're over an hour. I know. I know. And I kept thinking to him like, oh my gosh, like, there's so much more to say.

But you know, yeah, we're running. We're already running late. So. Well, let's not stop the conversation.

Let's do it another way. They're on an episode or a live. I mean, this is a good conversation. People, I think people, when

I say like, people need to hear this. It's like, I need to hear this. When I say people, I meant me. So thank you.

I, do you have anything that like, how do people get connected with you? Because I'm sure a lot of people are like, how do I get this therapist in my network?

Yeah. I'm, so yeah, I'm in Glendora, California. So if you're in SoCal nearby, you are definitely welcome to find me on my website.

And newharborcounseling .com. We have a handful of therapists. Just find my mug and click on my link and you can find out how to contact me there.

If you are in the state of California, I can do telehealth if you want to work with me. But if you're out of California, I'd have to refer up.

But you're more than welcome to, you know, anyone who's listening to reach out. If you have questions about religious trauma,

I feel like we just touched like a little bit of the iceberg and there's so much more depth here. But if you have questions, if you're curious, if you want resources, shoot me an email at rbohm at newharborcounseling .com.

Can that be put in the show notes? Oh yeah. All of this will be linked below in the show notes. So if you're on Spotify, just in the show notes.

Yeah. Excellent. So don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions. I'm happy to provide resources. I'm a pretty active reader. And so if you're like, hey,

I want some books to read more about this. I'm happy to share some books. Love it. And other podcasts and things like that.

And yeah, happy to be helpful in any way I can. I can be helpful. Of course. Of course.

And you do in person as well as telehealth? Yeah. Yeah. Primarily in person, that's the bulk of my sessions.

But if you're like, hey, I can only do telehealth, we'll do that. Love it. I love telehealth. I've only done telehealth.

Okay. Big fan. It works for some people and others are like, not in a million years. It's a little weird when you're like, where do you feel that in your body?

Like, let me get into the frame. But yeah, totally. Totally. Awesome.

Well, I'm glad that we're just starting the conversation. There's so much more to be said. I told a couple people that this was the topic

I was doing this week. And they were like, oh, I'll listen to that one. So I hope it resonates with some people.

But yeah, we'll definitely continue the conversation some way, somehow. Thank you so much, Ryan, for giving me some time on your

Saturday. This is so kind of you. Thank you for having me and giving me a chance to share. And I hope it's helpful. Of course.