RELIGION + ANXIETY // S2E4
I understand that religion, for some, can be a positive and uplifting experience. For others, it can induce a good amount of fear and negativity. I was raised Pentecostal. Religion was not a good experience for me. All I can do is share my stories with you. At times I joke it off and say it’s ridiculous but it left some wounds/scars that I’m working on. I touch on just a few childhood memories in this episode. I asked my people on Instagram if they were raised in a religious environment and if they experienced fear or anxiety because of religion. 415 people responded. See their answers to the right.
Click HERE to read the anonymous responses to the question:
WHAT FEAR HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED BECAUSE OF RELIGION?
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Oh Lordy. Hi salutations. The one. Topic that I'm going to touch on now. I can't, I mean, it's one topic, but it's like so much of my entire life that it's going to be very challenging to try and condense this into maybe a 20 minute episode, but it has to do with anxiety, um, and religion and how those to hold hands and frolic in a field of glass.
Okay. So I think how I'm going to start this one out is by reading something that I wrote. Oh, just yesterday. Nope. Just me May 18th right now. I wrote it two days ago. Just jotted it down really quick in my journal. And here's what it says.
Anytime I have to have contact with anyone, whether that be in person or on the phone, it completely throws off my entire day. It consumes me. It consumes my thoughts, my actions, my productivity. It's almost as if I have to spend most of the day giving myself miniature pep talks. It's exhausting. And by the time I have the meeting, the hangout, the date, the phone call, whatever it is I'm spent and physically tense. Sometimes it has taken control of my body and I've pulled muscles in my neck.It's like I'm at war with myself just to have interaction with anyone. Therefore, I feel most relaxed when I'm alone. Even then I use [00:02:00] the word relaxed, loosely, because during that time I'm either recovering from the above ordeal or I'm working on myself trying to figure out how to fix myself. This pandemic has been a breeze for me, and I want to think of the last time I looked forward to human interaction.
Well, that's just gets down to the heart of the matter. Doesn't it? Real life real talk. There it is. Um, for someone who probably presents as being an extrovert and very, um, comfortable in my own skin and very well connected with human beings, you know, there's a lot of underlying things that go into making that happen.
And a lot of trying to teach myself how to be an extrovert and how to have connections that work. For me and also teaching myself how to be a conversationalist, because that is, has never been part of what I've known. And I've worked hard [00:03:00] at it. I've worked very hard at it and I never want to stop learning, but the thing is what's important instead of learning how to be all those things, teaching myself how to function and watching other people's cues and studying them over the years and not just mimicking them.
I want to figure out why I am this way. Why so many of us are this way and really get to the bottom of it. If it's even possible to get to the bottom of it and figure out a new way of living, of actually living and being the real me, I think that's clearly important. This is my life. Like I want to live. My life as me. That's the real me, you know, that it seems so easy and simple. I'm reading this book, I'm reading so many random books, but I'm reading this book called the anatomy of loneliness by teal Swan. And I'll put the link in the show notes, but I want to read this in response to my journal entry. Regarding enmeshment trauma. I'm sure many of you have heard that we're going to talk about a couple of possibly triggering situations and my experiences with anxiety and with the church and religion. So keep that in your back pocket. And if you're not in a place to listen to this right now, silence me at once.
So enmeshment trauma and all of the things that I talk about, I am learning about them in real time as well. I remember the first time hearing about religious trauma, RTS, religious trauma syndrome, which I've been looking into more recently. Um, and it's like a light bulb went off for me, like that wasn't even thought about or allowed to enter my mind. That there was some type of trauma associated with my entire, you know, you know, like over two decades of me existing in this world.
So in this book, she talks about inmeshment trauma and I think it [00:05:00] was important. Um, in response to what I wrote in my journal measurement is a situation in which a person is not allowed to have autonomy. It occurs when personal boundaries aren't acknowledged, seen as valid or respected. It is common in households where an adult refuses to acknowledge the child as their own person. And instead regards them as an extension of themselves. The minute, a person steps into the room. You will instantly feel as if you need to cater your, every thought word and action to their desires, needs, perspectives and preferences. You immediately lose your authenticity for the sake of connection. It's like walking on broken glass, the tension and pressure you feel as a result of not being natural will be immediate.
So there is that little piece of information I wanted to give to you and something I'm reading about. Um, I would love to hear your thoughts.
If you start reading that book, [00:06:00] I'm almost done with it and I'm going to go back and listen again. So in this quick episode, I want to go into anxiety that I experienced as a small child because of religion. And I know that this is not everyone's situation and all I can do is share my memories with it and things that I've tried to, um, block out. And can't things that maybe I have blocked out. And then. Something immediately comes into my mind. And I th I think of that, um, I'm not a researcher. I'm not, I mean, I am for myself. I, I think we should all be researchers, but I'm not a Bernay Brown researching shame and knowing all about the topic. I am one person that feels that it is important to share my memories and my truths so that I can live fully. In hopes that it'll reach someone else who may be, can [00:07:00] relate to my experiences.
All right. So I jotted down a quick list of things that I wanted to talk about. Bullet points. If you will, I don't know what's going to come of this because this is not rehearsed and I don't think it should be, but each of these memories about my anxiety growing up in religion, I feel like I could write or talk about for, you know, an hour each. So I'm going to try and condense it. And if you want to talk more about them, maybe I'll write about it or maybe we can talk directly. I'm not sure.
Okay. So one of the first things that I remember during bedtime prayers, and I know some of you maybe won't relate to bedtime prayers and being tucked in by your parents or one parent.
I remember being probably whenever you start. Saying your own bedtime prayers. My mom would say them. And then I would say my own. One of the main things that sticks out is it just seems so pure and innocent as a [00:08:00] five-year-old praying to the Lord when she turns off her brain at night and her thoughts, my main prayer every night before I went to bed, I would end my prayers with Jesus helped me not to have any bad or good dreams. Of course, a kid does not want to have nightmares or bad dreams, but the fact that I would pray every single night, not to even have good dreams because my brain was so tired at the age of five. Yeah. That could get into a whole other thing, but yeah. I think that speaks volumes that I didn't want to have bad dreams or good dreams. I wanted my brain to have a break. That's still probably, if I were to say prayers still at the age of 37, I would stay still prayed to not have any dreams. So there's that, I'll kick it off with that one.
Another one that sticks out to me. I lived in California, grew and born and [00:09:00] raised in. Newport beach, Huntington beach, orange County area. So Vegas was always really close and we didn't go to Vegas for the, the, you know, what Mo most people think or go to Vegas for, which is like gambling and, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. No, no, we, as a nice Christian family, we would go to Vegas too. Go to Lake Mead. Uh, we would go eat at every single buffet known to mankind, and then we also had family there, you know, and when we would come back home from Vegas and it would be dark. So I would be in the back of our Aerostar van. Where did all of the Aerostar vans go? They're like. Obviously the stop making them, but then they're just gone. Like no one has them anymore. I haven't seen one in forever. There were the two sections of seats and my sister would sit in the middle section and we be allowed to still buckle up, but lay down. And I remember being in the dark and waking up and a panic, but not wanting to [00:10:00] disturb anyone. So I just sat there panicking, laying there in the back seat. Thinking, what if the rapture happens right now? What if my parents who were in the front seat and driving get taken from me and I have to steer the van. If my sister doesn't make it, or if I don't make it, you know, my sister is five years younger than me, so she was little. So was I so thinking about maneuvering a vehicle when you're, you know, nine years old, Um, in order to save yourself and save, you know, your sibling, um, How do I get safely to the side of the road so that we don't crash and die because my parents' bodies have been taken from the vehicle. And I remember thinking that often, often that I was not going to make it, you know, the rapture, I was never going to make it to heaven. I was going to be left behind and I was going to be left [00:11:00] in the middle of something to where a situation where I would have to take over and survive. Um, And the thing is, even if I did survive, it didn't matter. Like from the religious standpoint and how I was raised, it wouldn't have even mattered because I was already left behind. And if you were left behind, then you have to deal with the tribulation and then you have to deal with taking the Mark of the beast. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, and this sounds like some type of weird movie, Yeah. When you remove yourself from that religious environment and you look at it in a different light, it does look very silly parts of it, but the fear is real. The anxiety is real. The stuff that lives in your body, the trauma that lives in your body is real. And. You can't just get rid of it. It's not just like waking up [00:12:00] and your parents telling you that Santa Claus isn't real.
It is years and years of what I consider brainwashing. So undoing that I'm still trying to figure out how to undo that. But so then that leads me to. The left behind series and how they tailored the whole book series of the tribulation, the rapture, a second coming, all of that into a children's series to where kids could read this as if we already, maybe weren't suffering from anxiety.
At that point, let's read a whole series about being left in the world without our parents, or, you know, being scared and. I'm fearful of not making it, you know, and being abandoned by everyone that you knew and then going into like saving people. And that first episode I talked about. Where, as you, as a kid, if you weren't able to save these people and save your [00:13:00] friends and save, you know, their family who weren't Christians and they died and you have to live with the fact that they're in hell and you couldn't save them.
That's not what I remember mostly that what I do remember is being a kid in Christian school and not being able to watch the lion King. Um, so we weren't allowed to go to movies, the theater growing up, and then. I even felt such a sense of responsibility as a good Christian girl, didn't want to do anything wrong. That when mine class in sixth grade watched the lion King on rainy day, I told my teacher that I wasn't allowed to watch it. And I had to go sit in the principal's office during that time, because you know, the lion King in Disney movies were made by the same people who may movies that were horrible, like rated R movies.
Right. But for some reason, I wasn't allowed to watch those movies, but I cannot for the life of me, remember where, and when I [00:14:00] watched this, but as a kid, I watched this movie that was made in the seventies called a thief in the night. So if you were raised reading the Bible, there's a verse in first Thessalonians about, um, you know, Jesus being like a thief in the night and coming in the middle of the night, too. Take his people home who are Christians and then everyone who is not a Christian they're left behind on this earth. So this movie, I remember being really young. Like I think it was under 10 years old, but I remember this one part where a kid was left behind like a little kid. He was probably around my age at the time his parents didn't let him take the Mark of the beast. And he had to get his head chopped off with a guillotine. And I remember watching that and thinking, Oh Lord, not really. That would have been a ticket to the hot place cause you can't take the Lord's [00:15:00] name in vain. Um, so if I don't accept Christ and live according to his plans for me and save people, I'm going to get my head chopped off and I'm going to be alone. On this earth wandering around without my parents. Obviously they're making it to heaven and I'm just going to be left fending for myself as a small child, trying to avoid a beheading device. Like what?
Yes, this sounds so stupid and is often times dismissed as trauma. Because it does seem so silly that you would believe that, or be taught to believe that, but when you're in the thick of it and that's all, you know, that's what you believe because you are a child whose brain is forming and the people in your life who responsible for shaping you chose to make those decisions, because that's what [00:16:00] they knew. And that's where they were at in life. That's what they were told to do, perhaps. And they didn't question it. I think that's the problem. There is a lack of questioning and a very quick response to this is what we were told. Our parents obviously knew best. Let me follow in their footsteps instead of saying why in the world is this something that I believe?
So fast forward from that young age to now and trying desperately to have conversations that are productive with my family. Not about even me being gay. I think that is something so all of these anxieties are things that I would have faced and had anxiety about whether I was gay, straight, anywhere on the spectrum, being gay and being raised religious is a whole set of other [00:17:00] Traumas. So right now, for the sake of time, I won't even get into that. But even as an adult, trying to initiate conversations that are productive with my family, asking legitimate questions of why they raised me this way, why, why they chose this and Lee, I think more importantly, Because I think I know why they just that's what they were told to do. I think it's that simple. That's what they were told to do and they didn't question it, but I think more importantly is being heard is having them see me and hear me share with them how that affected me without getting defensive, without getting, um, without being dismissed. Because of something you didn't even choose. Didn't choose religion. Didn't choose to be gay. So those two [00:18:00] things being dismissed for things you didn't even choose since there won't be the closure there with my family. And then I've come to terms with that. I have to find closure and answers for myself in order to move forward.
Let's go back to religion.
Um, Oh, just two other memories. One was what I call. The Holy roller rolling chair. I think I was maybe in fifth grade, um, raise Pentecostal. So, you know, anything can happen at that point and you witnessed a lot of weird things. Um, that just seemed normal at the time, but one was after an altar call, I think on like just a standard Wednesday night service. It was normal to watch and witness adults. Being slain in the spirit, which means their bodies kind of go lifeless and fall into the floor. But we had catchers, we had body catchers in church that would catch the bodies before they hit the ground. I think that's a song [00:19:00] and they would, then there would be designated women who covered women who were wearing skirts. So no one would stumble. Well, my mom. Was taken by the spirit one Wednesday night service and on stage was, I mean, it was pretty normal to have people flailing about in the spirit. And so I didn't question that part. It was more so when the church was service was over, people were leaving. Like they were ready to turn the lights out in the church and my mom didn't come back to life. And so in my young mind, I'm like, okay, My mom is dead. My mom is unconscious. I don't know what is, what I'm witnessing here. Um, it's different when it's not a random person in the church, but it's your mom and you watch your dad bring a rolling office chair into the sanctuary and [00:20:00] put her lifeless body into this chair and wheel her down the aisle in the church and load her body into our minivan. After we collected her rings, we had to find her rings from the church because she shaking those off. Nothing was talked about that wasn't addressed, that wasn't explained.
Um, and then one time, I think also in like fifth, sixth grade, um, my parents told me, I don't remember which one it was, but, um, after church again, Just standard, you know, Wednesday night, Thursday night service, probably Thursday night. Cause that was youth group. Um, they were going to cast a demon out of it, someone in the youth group. So of course I was warned staff. You can stay in the sanctuary while they do this, but you have to say the word Jesus over and over again. So the demon doesn't go into you or you can go wait out in the foyer, [00:21:00] like out in the outside. Casual just casual. Okay. Well, I don't remember what I chose. I think I L I think I left, I mean, safety first, right? You don't want to accidentally have a demon inside of you. That's a tragedy. I wonder where that kid is today. I do think about, I remember his first and last name, but wonder where he is. And if he ever got that demon cast out of him, wonder what it was for. I wonder what the demon was when he was 16. If we're being real, it was probably like the demon of handholding. He probably held a girl's hand or, you know, touched a boob.
I don't know. It’s just sad. What is real life sometimes for kids. Anyway, those are some of the things that I remember over my lifetime that I never really got to tell or talk to my family about or anyone about. Besides my therapist, but I think it's important to bring those to light because even though [00:22:00] they can sound, um, ridiculous and, you know, laughing it off and I can make kind of make jokes about it, that, that sticks with you, that sticks with you. And there's a lot of undoing there.
So I will leave you with this.
I recently started reading up on, um, RTS, and I'm gonna read this. Section of a 20 page paper by a doctor named Marlene windmill. And I'll post a link to this too. Um, if any of you want to read this with me? So these first two are comments from people suffering from RTS.
I'm really struggling and I'm desperate never to go back to the religion I was raised in, but I no longer want to live in fear and or depression. It seems that I'm walking through the jungle alone with my machete. No one to share my crazy and sometimes scary thoughts with. After years of depression, anxiety, anger, and finally a week in a psychiatric [00:23:00] hospital a year ago. I'm now trying to pick up the pieces and put them together into something that makes sense.
I'm confused. My whole identity is a shredded tangled mess. I'm in utter turmoil. These comments are not unusual for people suffering with RTS. Religious trauma. Isn't religion supposed to be helpful, or at least benign in the case of fundamentalist beliefs, people expect that choosing to leave a childhood faith is like giving up Santa Claus, a little sad, but basically a matter of growing up, but religious indoctrination can be hugely damaging and making the break from an authoritarian kind of religion can definitely be traumatic.
It involves a complete upheaval of a person's construction of reality, including the self other people, life, the future, everything people in familiar with it, including therapists have trouble appreciating the sheer terror. It can create and the recovery needed. So I hope you'll, um, I hope [00:24:00] you'll keep in touch with me about your response to this episode.
I know it's a lot to grasp, especially if you weren't raised in that. Um, it's a lot to grasp if you were raised in that. And it's probably like a relief to hear people talking about it. I know when I heard the word word, religious trauma or religious abuse, It was like a weight had been lifted off of me and I didn't even know what it was yet. I just knew that's what I had and that's what I was suffering from. And I think when I talk about uncovering and digging into the layers and layers of trauma and why my responses, emotional responses or lack thereof, my physical responses, I talk about, there's got to be some. Root cause it is not lost on me. That religion could be this underlying problem that I've been dealing with or [00:25:00] not dealing with the thing that I've been invoicing and pushing down so that I don't have to deal with it and distracting myself with busy-ness because who wants to say that religion? And something that was such a massive part of their lives cause suffering hurt, tension, depression, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, suicidal thoughts for some worthlessness, lack of connection, lack of intimacy, lack of information about sex. Not feeling safe, not being able to trust people in leadership or an authority. Oh, don't get me started on that. So many things. And that's why we're talking about it. Oh. And I didn't even get started on the condemnation of gay people and the topics and struggles that we have to [00:26:00] deal with on top of those already existing. Anxieties and concerns and things that keep us up at night overthinking and obsessing about trying to be perfect. For what reason? Because our parents didn't question their parents. No, no, we don't have time for that anymore.
It's time to question. It's time to rethink everything we learned and figure out why we exist, what our purpose is here on this planet. Before we die.
I'm tired of wasting time. I'm tired of wasting time that I didn't even get a choice in like, wasting. Like it wasn't even my time to waste, but because it wasn't viewed as my life. I don't want to waste any more time. There there's no room for that now in my life. My only regret is that I didn't start questioning sooner, but once you start questioning and thinking for yourself, the possibilities are endless. I will say that. And I am just thankful that you're here with me during this process. Love you all.
Article on Religious Trauma Syndrome by Dr Marlene Winell: HERE
Book Reference: The Anatomy of Loneliness by Teal Swan HERE