I’ve been reading the book, “I Fired God” by Jocelyn Zichtermann, as well as reading more content from ex-vangelicals and progressive Christians. I highly recommend the book, Shameless, by Nadia Bolz Weber.
And as well as the deep feels that come from remembering all of the messages I received, I noticed how familiar the journey of Faith Deconstruction is. This is a process I went through 10 years ago, and I’m still processing it to this day.
In this post I want to talk about anger, trauma, and choice, and how this affects your healing.
Shoulding
There is one underlying message that many religions install into you, which is the obligation of SHOULD.
You “should” think this way, you “should” pray, you “should” put Jesus first. You “should” squash all your sexual desires.
What I know now is that all of this “shoulding” about your thoughts and feelings causes a split within your psyche.
You lose your genuine voice and what you really want.
Or in the words of Betty Martin, you lose your route of direct pleasure.
Because what you want is sinful, so why should you want it? In fact, your heart is sinful, humans are sinful, and you cannot trust yourself, only God and scripture (or rather, a specific interpretation of scripture).
To anybody not raised in Faith or a cult, this seems really ridiculous. Or if you grew up just going to Church some Sundays, but wasn’t really a big deal, you may think I’m exaggerating.
But if you were, you know what I mean. Whether in Evangelicalism, the Catholic Church, Baptist, Methodist, Mormon, JW, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, or anything else.
It becomes your whole life
I cannot emphasize enough that when you are in a Faith, it’s not just going to Church. Mosque, or Temple once a week.
To be a “Good” Christian, Catholic, Mormon, JW. Muslim, or anything else, it is the filter through which you see the whole world and how you relate to yourself.
The ones who are praised are the ones who make it their whole life. You should be more like them, their Faith is strong. You’re a “Bad” Christian, Catholic, Mormon, JW, Muslim, or anything else because you have fallen into worldly temptation. Don’t be of the world!
Splitting the psyche
Deeper than this, you are conditioned to deny your felt sense and intuition, which I now know are crucial to navigating life and to healing.
Any doubts you have are called, “The spirit of unbelief”, or something similar, to be prayed away and gotten rid of. If you are doubting, it means your Faith isn’t real and you have failed. So pray harder and louder, read more scripture, beg for God to take this stain out of you.
Do you see what effect this has on your psyche? The deep splitting this causes is immense.
Hence when you leave your Faith, the process of deconstruction is incredibly painful because it requires you to strip away your whole identity, how you were raised, who you think you are, literally everything. It fucking hurts.
It’s messy. It’s ugly. You will cry a lot.
You will have all sorts of painful and uncomfortable emotions come to the surface. And you may hurt people in this process.
This is why you see so much hypocrisy in people in Faith and with people who have either left or been kicked out. They are desperately trying to keep their shattered sense of self together, but because they have had to compartmentalize themselves for so long, they inevitably fuck up.
Seeing the light
For me, the seeds of questioning were sown back when I was 15. I had gotten sick with M.E. a year earlier, and I had just had the first BIG relapse.
I had had to leave school and I was living at home. I slept a lot, my brain was mush, and I had random aches and pains shooting all over my body. I felt like I had turned into a zombie, and I couldn’t leave the house because I could barely walk 50 metres down the road.
However, I did what every good Christian did: I prayed. A lot.
I read books. I had hands laid upon me by the curate and various others. I prayed and prayed for God to bestow a healing upon me.
I tried SO HARD to find God’s message for me in all of this because it was just so unfair. I had such a bright future ahead of me, and yet I was struck down and couldn’t leave the house.
It came to a head one day when I was lying in my parent’s bed. Lying in my parent’s bed during the day was a sort of change of scene from lying in my own bed, because when you can’t leave the house, what else can you do?
And I felt a well of anger building up.
I finally let myself admit that I was fucking furious at God.
“I HATE GOD!”
Eek! Was this allowed? Wouldn’t God strike me down? Wouldn’t I go to hell for this? God is Good! He is love and merciful! Anything not God was the Devil! (Again, this is another form of splitting and compartmentalizing where everything “good” is God and everything “bad” was the Devil.)
Thankfully, my mum said to me, “Let it out, let God have it!”
So I yelled at God (or in this case, the ceiling).
I yelled out all the anger, I called him every profanity under the sun that I could think of. I told him how much I HATED him.
All of the years of “shoulding” fell away. I let myself express and feel what I really felt towards God.
Disappointment. Rage. Hurt.
And the seeds were sown. It took more years, and time in hospital and care homes before I fully made the break from my Faith. And I let myself explore everything that I was told was, “The Devil” before.
That’s another story.
Summary
When you are not allowed to feel your feelings and express what you want- whether to your parents and caregivers, to your Faith community, your family, or anyone else, this causes deep trauma on your mind, body, spirit, and nervous system.
When you are not allowed to doubt, to think certain thoughts, to feel feelings, to ask questions. When you are told that if you don’t believe then you will go to Hell.
This will manifest somehow. For me, it manifested in my body where I got sick. Or it can manifest in other ways, but it will leak out somewhere. From codependent relationships, to a deep feeling of dissatisfaction and denial, to compulsive behaviours.
Healing and freedom come when you can express your voice, and be given choice.
If this was part of your upbringing and life, I want to say I SEE YOU.
I see the years of internalized rage. The losing your voice. The disconnection from your body. The rage and anger at your body. The shame. The disgust. The not being able to trust yourself.
And I promise, it gets better.
You are not inherently sinful, your body is not weak, your emotions can be trusted. Healing comes from re-claiming your sovereignty and choice.
The picture for this post was taken by Lauren Mabbett when we did my photoshoot back in June next to a graffiti picture of Jesus.
Ready to take the next step to your sexual freedom? Learn more about how we can work together here.
Download your free guide to mastering sexual communication here
Lucy Rowett, CSC – Pronouns: She/Her/Her