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amazonia-love · 5 years

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When Love Comes To Town

You guys ever have that moment when you hear something and, all of a sudden, finally understand a concept you have never really grasped before? It happened to me recently at a TBT-S (Temperament Based Treatment, with Supports) workshop for carers of kids with ED run by Drs Laura Hill, Stephanie Knatz Peck and (I forgot the other name – doh). Dr Hill was talking about why CW purging is so compelling. As she talked, I suddenly had complete clarity about my own history with purging. I suffered with AN/BP for nine years from before I was a teenager to age 20; I don’t have to describe the struggle. I know that you who have it, or have had it, or have cared for someone who has it, understand already. It is hell, isn’t it? No matter how many times I promised myself I would “stop”, no matter how many times I begged the God of my childhood to forgive me and to help me not do this to myself any more, I was unable to break the habit. I would suppress my intake for as long as I could and then bust out into a spree; or it would just happen over and over again every day for weeks – no rhyme nor reason – and no way out that I knew. I had breaks of being behaviour free – but they were few and far between. Plus, I lost my ability to function well at those moments. The behaviours worsened when I was involved in a relationship of any kind with a boy. They became the way I managed distress about expectations; on one hand, the expectations of the religion in which I was raised, and which was all consuming, about physical behaviour between “the opposite sexes”; on the other, the expectations of boys and men about physical behaviour. And somewhere in the middle of those, me myself, and my absolute hatred of being “groped” competing with an all-consuming craving for being “loved”. I would find myself in a relationship (which was really just one big struggle to feel validated while repeatedly peeling some guy’s fingers off my body?) and enjoy the euphoria that came with feeling wanted, and with being held, and being touched in a non-sexual manner. Trouble is, non-sexual touch was never enough for most guys; cue the usual battle, hands from no-go zones, while trying to avoid rejection.

My craving, above all, was to be wanted.

I remember sitting in a car with a guy friend once and telling him that I just wanted someone to want to marry me. He just about died on the spot. I didn’t understand why he was so nervous. But he misunderstood the words. I wasn’t saying I wanted him (or anyone else) to marry me, just that I wanted to be WANTED. Poor guy probably shat himself.

Given that I was raised in a misogynistic religion, where women were seen as temptresses, leading men to sin, and sex outside of marriage was about the worst thing anyone could do, it was natural that I struggled with overwhelming guilt. Hell, when I was a pre-teen, I used to tickle my own arms as a means of soothing myself. I know now that it was stimming, and it is not a big deal. Back then I felt as guilty as hell because I believed it was “masturbation”, which was right up there with some of the worst things as mentioned. I had no concept of physical pleasure being “allowed” or that I was ok to bring it to myself. To complicate things further, I had been sexually abused as a small child by a family member. My response in that situation had been to “freeze” (my default fear response), and later to shame myself for it having happened, a pattern that would play out many times in my later years. The worst part of that experience was losing the innate response to say no and resist, and not ever having that response validated or reinforced by someone else. It was only as an adult that I began the difficult task of validating my own responses to that situation.

Add to this the rhetoric in my family religion around “gluttony”. Hoo boy. Can of worms anyone? Gluttony was a “huge” sin, and as a child I listened to many bible-based talks (given by the same men in suits that roundly condemned all things sexual) condemning “desires of the flesh”…. Overindulgence in food and sexual pleasure – an incredibly damning combination. Add in my father’s eating disordered behaviours and personality, and his incessant discussions about fat people – linking body size to weakness and lack of discipline, greed and “not really being spiritual people” as he himself struggled against his own hunger and deep sense of self-loathing, and his rigid control over the clothing his daughters wore, and his constant attempts to supress any signs of blooming sexuality in our actions or dress.

It was a shitstorm that enabled my ED to flourish. The only way of managing my anxiety was, of course, practicing ED behaviours; either severe restriction (usually fasting on vegetable juices, something our family had done since I was 9), or reactive eating followed by purging.

And then love came to town. Someone wanted to marry me. A manboy of 20, same age as me. He had the same urges as all the other boys, of course, but it was a little more permissable in the context of “getting married”. Sex was all good in a married state (until misogyny and patriarchy reared their ugly heads, along with our complete ignorance about adulting, and my trauma history came home to roost). And, because the religious constraints around “going too far” were in place, I was getting all of the physical affection I had been craving, without being pressured overly much for more.

I “confessed” to him about the purging. He “confessed” a “great sin” of his own. And, naively and hopefully, we promised that that was the end of those behaviours. Which, of course, it wasn’t. But we thought it would be. I did stop purging. Only had a couple of lapses after that. It was like switching off a light. One moment the purge was there, and the next it was gone. (What I didn’t know was that I was not “cured” of ED, and that it was still running the show behind the scenes, and that it would overwhelm me in the future any time I faced an anxiety-inducing situation.)

In my mind I had always tied it up with “being in love”. I used to jokingly say that I had “traded addictions”. Turns out, I was partially right. Partially.

Back to Dr Hill. In her discussion about purging, she mentioned the huge rush of a nine-amino acid peptide, vasopressin, at that moment, which has a euphoric, heady, calming effect (it also affects fluid balance in the body). Vasopressin is one of the reasons that purging is so compelling. I registered with a shock that I had taken a photo of a newspaper article that mentioned vasopressin, and that it was still stored in my phone. I flicked through my gallery until I found this.

And there it was.

Dr Hill’s words completed and validated my understanding of how I had been able to stop purging at the time. I replaced one source of vasopressin with another, and added in high levels of oxytocin (which has been used to some success in treating AN) to boot. I knew back then the purging was problematic. But I didn’t have a name for it until a few years later. And, the fact that I had been able to stop the behaviour fooled me into thinking that I had been cured at that moment. As more became known about ED, I used to believe that I had “had” an ED in my younger years; I used to believe purging was an addiction; and I used to think that my eating was an addiction as well, and that all I had to do was to get the same control over it that I had gained over purging. Which I endeavoured to do for most of my adult life, and came closest to perfecting, between the ages of 46-52, before realising that I had a very long term relationship indeed with ED, and that my seeming “perfect control” was classically typical AN.

ED and anxiety are bosom buddies. All too often we focus on the behaviours, or on our current weight, or on the foods we are eating, or on how are clothes might fit. Practising remission isn’t about “what “ we do or how much we weigh, but hinges on whether or not we are using ED modalities to manage our anxiety. Stopping purging was great. But I STILL had an active ED. If I map out my life from that moment, there is a clear pattern. I resorted to getting into, or staying in, an overall calorie deficit whenever things got stressful. And until I interrupted THAT pattern, I was unable to practise remission.

Deal to the anxiety; and you deal to the ED.

#bulimia nervosa #AN/BP #binge/purge #eating disorders #eating disorder recovery #weight stigma #anxiety disorder

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gaiatheorist · 5 years

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“Morality.”

“Should children as young as 5 be taught about sexual practices between consenting adults?” No, obviously, children are not adults, and have a disturbing habit of copying things they’ve heard or observed. I’m more concerned about A+E attendances to have foreign bodies removed than I am about children ‘learning’ to be anything other than heterosexual, though.

We’ve been here before, with Section 28 prohibiting the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools. Imposed morality, ‘this’ is the right way to be, and nothing else exists. From 1988 to 2000, the only ‘acceptable’ family structure was a Mummy and a Daddy who loved each other very much, and sometimes had a special cuddle. In bed. With the lights off. Bonus points if the Mummy and the Daddy were married. To each other. Anything else was a ‘pretended’ family structure. Apart from the “It’s OK to say no.” booklets in primary school, I don’t remember any ‘sex and relationships’ education at all, the booklets came too late for me, and loaded on the guilt that someone had been doing things they shouldn’t have, and I hadn’t said no. Everything else was biology, insert-tab-A-into-slot-B, to quote the Manic Street Preachers “My idea of where life comes from, a childhood glimpse of pornography.” it really was the age of finding a ‘mucky book’ under a hedge back then. (Or a video tape with no label, and the tabs popped out, before satellite TV.)

As much as some of our Mums and Dads fucked us up, so did our schooling. The government’s decision that heterosexuality was the norm, and anything else deviant left some of us with ‘nowhere to go’, burying feelings, ostracised by the bullying of the ‘normal’ kids. Homosexuality isn’t illegal, discrimination technically is, and this ‘morality’ debate is a constructed nonsense that will impede the acceptance that love is love, in its many and varied forms. (Sticking with the ‘love’ angle, rather than the ‘sex’ one, the primary school lessons wouldn’t touch on the many ways to couple-or-multiple.) It’s tired but true, that children are malleable and accepting before they are exposed to prejudice. “Why does uncle Bob go everywhere with uncle Jim?” “They’re in love, like Mummy and Daddy.” “Oh, can I have a biscuit?” It really is that simple.

It doesn’t really matter which ‘moral majority’ has the pitchforks out, where there is a majority, there will be a minority, and that imbalance leads to oppression. Letting the kids know, at 5, that there isn’t only ‘one way’ will reduce some of the homophobic bullying at 7, some of the confusion at 13, and some of the self-loathing and suicide at 15. Some of it, not all, because the children don’t only exist in their classrooms and playgrounds. The refusal to acknowledge the ‘other’ choices is a backward step, and it will lead to harm, when some of those children realise that they are ‘other’, deviant, abnormal.

As much as we’re seeing some celebrities and ‘influencers’ openly-out, not only as homosexual, but a plethora of things we don’t even have tick-boxes for yet, we’ve also seen a return to death-by-stoning in Brunei. Good old family values, there, it applies to adultery as well as homosexual activity. “Oh, but that’s ‘The Muslims’ doing Sharia law, that’s not us!” Death by stoning. Lapidation is a word I never thought I’d need to learn in 2019, Pearl-clutching Christians take note, isn’t the one about not-killing quite near the top of the list of commandments? (I can’t even wrap my head around the ‘observed by’ angle to it, inflicting trauma on a whole group of people, as a means of keeping them in line. It’s barbaric, which is, I suppose, me making a moral judgement.)

My ‘morality’ is of the ‘harm none’ flavour, my sexual orientation is fluid. That’s not as difficult to reconcile as it might appear, because I don’t wish harm against the Sultan of Brunei, or the parents protesting in Birmingham. I pity them. I think they’re wrong, but still I pity them. By choosing to live by religion-imposed rules, they narrow their world-view, by imposing those views on others, they isolate and ostracise themselves. In the current fragile-fractured society in the UK, it wouldn’t take much for the UKIP contingent to correlate the Sharia stance in Brunei with ‘all Muslims’, if only it didn’t run the risk of them ‘catching gayness’.

‘Exposed to’ was one of the phrases used. I’m not infectious. My son is ‘pansexual’, whatever that is because he just IS, he had a hetero-normative upbringing, one ‘Mummy’ and one ‘Daddy’ with a marriage certificate signed and sealed long before he was conceived. (He called us ‘Mum’ and ‘My Mum’ for ages, amusing, but it didn’t stop him observing his Dad’s ‘Wahey, look at the tits on that!’ mentality, or his Granddad’s insistence that women were weak-and-feeble little things, that needed to be looked after. Hardly surprising that he never had a girlfriend at school, we must have seemed confusing creatures to him.) His Dad, for all his faults, wasn’t maliciously homophobic, he did have some gay and lesbian acquaintances, but he also engaged in the derogatory banter that’s ‘expected’ in the circles he moved in. Porn-lesbians were titillating, real-lesbians less-so for him, he had defended his gay friends growing up, but still used ‘bummer’ and such as insults.

Children do need to be ‘exposed to’ the undisputed fact that not all relationships are heterosexual, and that needs to happen when they’re still at the “Oh, right, can I have a biscuit?” stage. To say otherwise is immoral, because it allows the discrimination and hostility to creep into the lives of those children, with nothing to counter it. It is absolutely fine, and fair for people to have an opinion on homosexuality, bisexuality, fixed-or-fluid gender, what is not fine or fair is for them to impose their opinion on others as a fact. Again, homosexuality is not a criminal offence in the UK, or a mental disorder, some people find it a distasteful notion, and therefore deem it ‘wrong.’ If it’s being practiced consensually, between adults, and ‘not frightening the horses’, it can’t really be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it just is. ‘Moralising’ sexual preference (unless it’s for children or animals, or any other non-consensual practice, I’m not going to look them up, my search history is dubious enough as it is.) is harmful. There are gay Christians, lesbian Muslims, asexual people of ‘all faiths and none’, and myriad combinations of everything else. To refuse to acknowledge that is at best ignorant, and at worst incredibly damaging.

I don’t like baked beans. Some people do, some people are indifferent. I’ll eat them if I have to, but I’d prefer not to. What I won’t do is insist that other people don’t eat baked beans, because I think they’re ‘wrong’. (I actually think they’re goblin-shit, disgusting orange lumpy things, with a terrible habit of sticking to the back of the fork, and ending up in the washing-up bowl, but that’s just me.) Whether I eat baked beans or not doesn’t impact on anyone else. Neither does whatever I get up to in the privacy of my own bedroom. I’m not going to go about the place defacing baked beans cans in the supermarket, or hurling abuse at people I see eating baked beans. I’m not going to go to anyone’s house, and dump their beans-on-toast in the bin, I just don’t like beans. I’ve outed myself as bean-ist, bean-ophobic. I could claim that I have a ‘moral objection’ to baked beans, and start a campaign to ban them. How ridiculous would that be?

Nobody taught me to dislike baked beans, in the same way as nobody taught me to have something of an ambiguous attraction to males and females. I’m ‘greedy’, because I can find either/or equally appealing. Or neither, depending on circumstances. I’m not stealing your beans, or forcing you to eat beans, my sexual identity has absolutely no impact on anyone but the person I’m with. I’m no more a ‘predatory lesbian’ than I am a ‘cougar’, chasing down anything with a pulse in order to satiate my ‘dubious’ desires. (Anyone pearl-clutching about the fact that I worked in a school, and might have ‘exposed’ myself to children, it only ever came up once in 14 years. “Miss, I think I might be bi, what are you?” “I’m not really anything, apart from ‘me’, and that’s all you have to be.” ever so slightly duplicitous, but I didn’t want the girl to think it was compulsory to ‘pick a side’ at the age of 13.)

There will be children in those classrooms in Birmingham, and across the UK who will end up being not-heterosexual. There will be children with two ‘mums’ or two ‘dads’, invisible-erased under the ‘moral’ proclamation of ‘normality’. Yes, it is the majority-norm, but it isn’t the only option, and insisting that it should-be, citing ‘morality’ is regressive, and harmful. It could, potentially, be the start of a slippery slope, if it’s ‘morally justified’ not to even mention homosexuality, what next? Whose morals carry the greater weight, and how should they be imposed on others?

As others have pointed out, there would be outcry if it was another-other that had been cited as a moral objection. It is illegal to discriminate on grounds of religion, or ethnicity, or gender, disability OR sexual orientation. That a proportion of the population find homosexual practices distasteful does not mean that they are ‘immoral’, any more than a mixed-race marriage, or a couple where one partner was raised Jewish, and the other Catholic. The ‘question’ shouldn’t have needed to be asked. It isn’t a ‘question’ in any sense other than the rhetorical, no amount of hiding behind religious dogma framed as morality makes it a valid question. I respect the rights of others to have views that differ from mine, but the perceived victory of this ‘moral’ argument makes me uneasy. If a parent-protest about homosexuality can cause a school to (temporarily) cease part of the curriculum, what’s next? ‘History is written by the victors’ comes to mind, how many backward-steps before the whole SRE curriculum is deemed immoral, what with some groups objecting to sex before marriage, why should children be ‘taught’ about reproduction, healthy relationships, and bodily autonomy? They’ll find out when they’re married.

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aliceviceroy · 6 years

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“I am 30 years old and I am struggling to find sanity. Between the Christian schools, homeschooling, the Christian group home (indoctrinating work camp) and different churches in different cities, I am a psychological, emotional and spiritual mess.” –A former Evangelical

If a former believer says that Christianity made her depressed, obsessive, or post-traumatic, she is likely to be dismissed as an exaggerator. She might describe panic attacks about the rapture; moods that swung from ecstasy about God’s overwhelming love to suicidal self-loathing about repeated sins; or an obsession with sexual purity.

A symptom like one of these clearly has a religious component, yet many people instinctively blame the victim. They will say that the wounded former believer was prone to anxiety or depression or obsession in the first place—that his Christianity somehow got corrupted by his predisposition to psychological problems. Or they will say that he wasn’t a real Christian. If only he had prayed in faith believing or loved God with all his heart, soul and mind, if only he had really been saved—then he would have experienced the peace that passes all understanding.

But the reality is far more complex. It is true that symptoms like depression or panic attacks most often strike those of us who are vulnerable, perhaps because of genetics or perhaps because situational stressors have worn us down. But certain aspects of Christian beliefs and Christian living also can create those stressors, even setting up multigenerational patterns of abuse, trauma, and self-abuse. Also, over time some religious beliefs can create habitual thought patterns that actually alter brain function, making it difficult for people to heal or grow.

The purveyors of religion insist that their product is so powerful it can transform a life, but somehow, magically, it has no risks. In reality, when a medicine is powerful, it usually has the potential to be toxic, especially in the wrong combination or at the wrong dose. And religion is powerful medicine!

In this discussion, we focus on the variants of Christianity that are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. These include Evangelical and fundamentalist churches, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and other conservative sects. These groups share the characteristics of requiring conformity for membership, a view that humans need salvation, and a focus on the spiritual world as superior to the natural world. These views are in contrast to liberal, progressive Christian churches with a humanistic viewpoint, a focus on the present, and social justice.

Religion Exploits Normal Human Mental Processes.

To understand the power of religion, it is helpful to understand a bit about the structure of the human mind. Much of our mental activity has little to do with rationality and is utterly inaccessible to the conscious mind. The preferences, intentions and decisions that shape our lives are in turn shaped by memories and associations that can get laid down before we even develop the capacity for rational analysis.

Aspects of cognition like these determine how we go through life, what causes us distress, which goals we pursue and which we abandon, how we respond to failure, how we respond when other people hurt us—and how we respond when we hurt them. Religion derives its power in large part because it shapes these unconscious processes: the frames, metaphors, intuitions and emotions that operate before we even have a chance at conscious thought.

Some Religious Beliefs and Practices are More Harmful Than Others.

When it comes to psychological damage, certain religious beliefs and practices are reliably more toxic than others.

Janet Heimlich is an investigative journalist who has explored religious child maltreatment, which describes abuse and neglect in the service of religious belief. In her book, Breaking their Will, Heimlich identifies three characteristics of religious groups that are particularly prone to harming children. Clinical work with reclaimers, that is, people who are reclaiming their lives and in recovery from toxic religion, suggests that these same qualities put adults at risk, along with a particular set of manipulations found in fundamentalist Christian churches and biblical literalism.

1) Authoritarianism, creates a rigid power hierarchy and demands unquestioning obedience. In major theistic religions, this hierarchy has a god or gods at the top, represented by powerful church leaders who have power over male believers, who in turn have power over females and children. Authoritarian Christian sects often teach that “male headship” is God’s will. Parents may go so far as beating or starving their children on the authority of godly leaders. A book titled, To Train Up a Child, by minister Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, has been found in the homes of three Christian adoptive families who have punished their children to death.

2) Isolation or separatism, is promoted as a means of maintaining spiritual purity. Evangelical Christians warn against being “unequally yoked” with nonbelievers in marriages and even friendships. New converts often are encouraged to pull away from extended family members and old friends, except when there may be opportunities to convert them. Some churches encourage older members to take in young single adults and house them within a godly context until they find spiritually compatible partners, a process known by cult analysts as “shepherding.” Home schoolers and the Christian equivalent of madrassas cut off children from outside sources of information, often teaching rote learning and unquestioning obedience rather than broad curiosity.

3) Fear of sin, hell, a looming “end-times” apocalypse, or amoral heathens binds people to the group, which then provides the only safe escape from the horrifying dangers on the outside. In Evangelical Hell Houses, Halloween is used as an occasion to terrify children and teens about the tortures that await the damned. In the Left Behind book series and movie, the world degenerates into a bloodbath without the stabilizing presence of believers. Since the religious group is the only alternative to these horrors, anything that threatens the group itself—like criticism, taxation, scientific findings, or civil rights regulations—also becomes a target of fear.

Bible Belief Creates an Authoritarian, Isolative, Threat-based Model of Reality

In Bible-believing Christianity, psychological mind-control mechanisms are coupled with beliefs from the Iron Age, including the belief that women and children are possessions of men, that children who are not hit become spoiled, that each of us is born “utterly depraved”, and that a supernatural being demands unquestioning obedience. In this view, the salvation and righteousness of believers is constantly under threat from outsiders and dark spiritual forces. Consequently, Christians need to separate themselves emotionally, spiritually, and socially from the world.These beliefs are fundamental to their overarching mental framework or “deep frame” as linguist George Lakoff would call it. Small wonder then, that many Christians emerge wounded.

It is important to remember that this mindset permeates to a deep subconscious level. This is a realm of imagery, symbols, metaphor, emotion, instinct, and primary needs. Nature and nurture merge into a template for viewing the world which then filters every experience. The template selectively allows only the information that confirms their model of reality, creating a subjective sense of its veracity.

On the societal scale, humanity has been going through a massive shift for centuries, transitioning from a supernatural view of a world dominated by forces of good and evil to a natural understanding of the universe. The Bible-based Christian population however, might be considered a subset of the general population that is still within the old framework, that is, supernaturalism.

Children are Targeted for Indoctrination Because the Child Mind is Uniquely Vulnerable.

“Here I am, a fifty-one year old college professor, still smarting from the wounds inflicted by the righteous when I was a child. It is a slow, festering wound, one that smarts every day—in some way or another…. I thought I would leave all of that “God loves… God hates…” stuff behind, but not so. Such deep and confusing fear is not easily forgotten. It pops up in my perfectionism, my melancholy mood, the years of being obsessed with finding the assurance of personal salvation.”

Nowhere is the contrast of viewpoints more stark than in the secular and religious understandings of childhood. In the biblical view, a child is not a being that is born with amazing capabilities that will emerge with the right conditions like a beautiful flower in a well-attended garden. Rather, a child is born in sin, weak, ignorant, and rebellious, needing discipline to learn obedience. Independent thinking is seen as dangerous pride.

Because the child’s mind is uniquely susceptible to religious ideas, religious indoctrination particularly targets vulnerable young children. Cognitive development before age seven lacks abstract reasoning. Thinking is magical and primitive, black and white. Also, young humans are wired to obey authority because they are dependent on their caregivers just for survival. Much of their brain growth and development has to happen after birth, which means that children are extremely vulnerable to environmental influences in the first few years when neuronal pathways are formed.

By age five a child’s brain can understand primitive cause-and-effect logic and picture situations that are not present. Children at this have a tenuous grip on reality. They often have imaginary friends; dreams are quite real; and fantasy blurs with the mundane. To a child this age, it is eminently possible that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and delivers presents if you are good and that 2000 years ago a man died a horrible death because you are naughty. Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, the Rapture, and hell, all can be quite real. The problem is that many of these teachings are terrifying.

For many years, one conversion technique targeting children and adolescents has been the use of movies about the “End Times.” This means a “Rapture” event, when real Christians are taken up to heaven leaving the earth to “Tribulation,” a terrifying time when an evil Antichrist will reign and the world will descend into anarchy.

When assaulted with such images and ideas at a young age, a child has no chance of emotional self-defense. Christian teachings that sound true when they are embedded in the child’s mind at this tender age can feel true for a lifetime. Even decades later former believers who intellectually reject these ideas can feel intense fear or shame when their unconscious mind is triggered.

Harms Range From Mild to Catastrophic.

One requirement for success as a sincere Christian is to find a way to believe that which would be unbelievable under normal rules of evidence and inquiry. Christianity contains concepts that help to safeguard belief, such as limiting outside information, practicing thought control, and self-denigration; but for some people the emotional numbing and intellectual suicide just isn’t enough. In other words, for a significant number of children in Christian families, the religion just doesn’t “take.” This can trigger guilt, conflict, and ultimately rejection or abandonment.

Others experience the threats and fear too keenly. For them, childhood can be torturous, and they may carry injuries into adulthood.

Still others are able to sincerely devote themselves to the faith as children but confront problems when they mature. They wrestle with factual and moral contradictions in the Bible and the church, or discover surprising alternatives. This can feel confusing and terrifying – like the whole world is falling apart.

Delayed Development and Life Skills. Many Christian parents seek to insulate their children from “worldly” influences. In the extreme, this can mean not only home schooling, but cutting off media, not allowing non-Christian friends, avoiding secular activities like plays or clubs, and spending time at church instead. Children miss out on crucial information– science, culture, history, reproductive health and more. When they grow older and leave such a sheltered environment, adjusting to the secular world can be like immigrating to a new culture. One of the biggest areas of challenge is delayed social development.

Religious Trauma Syndrome. Today, in the field of mental health, the only religious diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is “Religious or Spiritual Problem.” This is merely a supplemental code (V Code) to assist in describing an underlying pathology. Unofficially, “scrupulosity,” is the term for obsessive-compulsive symptoms centered around religious themes such as blasphemy, unforgivable sin, and damnation. While each of these diagnoses has a place, neither covers the wide range of harms induced by religion.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a new term, coined by Marlene Winell to name a recognizable set of symptoms experienced as a result of prolonged exposure to a toxic religious environment and/or the trauma of leaving the religion. It is akin to Complex PTSD, which is defined as ‘a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim’.

Though related to other kinds of chronic trauma, religious trauma is uniquely mind-twisting. The logic of the religion is circular and blames the victim for problems; the system demands deference to spiritual authorities no matter what they do; and the larger society may not identify a problem or intervene as in cases of physical or sexual abuse, even though the same symptoms of depression and anxiety and panic attacks can occur.

RTS, as a diagnosis, is in early stages of investigation, but appears to be a useful descriptor beyond the labels used for various symptoms – depression, anxiety, grief, anger, relationship issues, and others. It is our hope that it will lead to more knowledge, training, and treatment. Like the naming of other disorders such as anorexia or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), the RTS label can help sufferers feel less alone, confused, and self-blaming.

Leaving the Fold. Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion can be liberating: Certain problems end(!), such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational doctrines, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. However, for many reclaimers making the break is the most disruptive, difficult upheaval they have ever experienced. Individuals who were most sincere, devout, and dedicated often are the ones most traumatized when their religious world crumbles.

Rejecting a religious model of reality that has been passed on through generations is a major cognitive and emotional disruption. For many reclaimers, it is like a death or divorce. Their ‘relationship’ with God was a central assumption of their lives, and giving it up feels like an enormous loss to be grieved. It can be like losing a lover, a parent, or best friend.

On top of shattered assumptions comes the loss of family and friends. Churches vary with official doctrine about rejection. The Mormon Church, for all the intense focus on “family forever,” is devastating to leave, and the Jehovah Witnesses require families to shun members who are “disfellowshiped.”

The rupture can destroy homes, splitting spouses and alienating parents from children.

For Women, Psychological Costs of Belief Include Subjugation and Self-loathing.

Christianity poses a special set of psychological risks for people who, according to the Iron Age hierarchy found in the Bible are unclean or property, including women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the combination of denigration and subservience takes a psychological toll on women in Christianity as it does in Islam. Not only do women submit to marital abuse and undesired sexual contact, some tolerate the same toward their children, and men of God sometimes exploit this vulnerability, as in the case of Catholic and Protestant child sexual abuse. But most of the damage is far more subtle: lower self-esteem, less independence and confidence; abandoned dreams and goals.

Why Harm Goes Unrecognized. What is the sum cost of having millions of people holding to a misogynist, authoritarian, fear-based supernatural view of the universe? The consequences far-reaching, even global, but many are hidden, for two reasons.

One is the nature of the trauma itself. Unlike other harm, such as physical beating or sexual abuse, the injury is far from obvious to the victim, who has been taught to self-blame. It’s as if a person black and blue from a caning were to think it was self-inflicted.

The second reason that religious harm goes unrecognized is that Christianity is still the cultural backdrop for the indoctrination. While the larger society may not be fundamentalist, references to God and faith abound. The Bible gets used to swear in witnesses and even the U.S. president. Common phrases are “God willing,” “God bless,” “God helps those that help themselves,” “In God we trust,” and so forth. These lend credence to theistic authority.

Religious trauma is difficult to see because it is camouflaged by the respectability of religion in culture. To date, parents are afforded the right to teach their own children whatever doctrines they like, no matter how heinous, degrading, or mentally unhealthy. Even helping professionals largely perceive Christianity as benign. This will need to change for treatment methods to be developed and people to get help that allows them to truly reclaim their lives.

This article was adapted from “The Crazy Making in Christianity” Chapter 19 in Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, edited by John Loftus, Prometheus Books, October 2014.

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Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

#discovery list #cults #ex-christian #spiritual abuse

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