Shift Happens

A subtle change of perspective

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

When I started writing here about my religious trauma on top of childhood abuse, my main purpose was to support my own healing and to encourage and connect with others who might feel less alone when they read my words. There was also just a little extra hope on the side, that the church I came out of could evolve into something healthy. I don’t think I believe that anymore.

There’s still a little extra hope on the side, though, because individuals can still be made aware of the truth and get themselves out of there. The best thing that could happen to that organization is to crumble away, perhaps in the gradual erosion of people waking up and leaving one by one, or maybe coming off in some larger chunks, like small congregations that change their denominational affiliation because they find they are no longer aligned with the larger organization. I pray that ultimately we will see the end of every organization that can trace its origins back to a meeting of “would-be” control freaks in someone’s living room, because I care about the people still caught up in them.

Those organizations are toxic. I’ve known this for a long time. My body knew long before my mind could admit it. That’s why it screamed at me for 30 years. It’s also why I “struggled” so much throughout that time. The church’s authoritarian environment so closely mirrored that of my abusive childhood home, my brain often naturally responded with emotional flashbacks. Clinically, an emotional flashback is a cornerstone symptom of Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), defined as a sudden, involuntary reliving of a traumatic emotional state from the past, typically without the visual or auditory components of a standard PTSD flashback. Emotional flashbacks are characterized by specific neurobiological events such as hyper-responsivity in the amygdala, underactivity in the hippocampus, and “brownouts” in other parts of the brain. But mine were labeled as rebellion, pride, selfishness, disunity, whatever seemed to fit the accuser’s narrative. There is a huge difference between lovingly approaching a brother or sister with a concern, and ripping them a new one over a trauma response they cannot control. I know they did not know what was happening for me psychologically. Neither did I, but it does not change the fact that the church’s methods were unnecessarily harsh, intrusive, and manipulative, regardless of who was on the receiving end of them. For a childhood trauma survivor, it is reinjury. I was truly in the dark about what was happening to me.

When that lightbulb of conscious awareness finally switched on, it was a shock, but I didn’t realize the dimmer switch hadn’t even been turned up yet. The more I heal, and the more mental distance I gain between myself and that toxic system, the brighter that light becomes. I see and understand more and more, and I try to shed some of that light on others. But with some of that understanding has come justifiable anger.

That anger has needed to be processed and expressed, and I’ve done a lot of that. Some people don’t appreciate the expression part, but I didn’t appreciate being spiritually traumatized, either, and I am not the only one. People who are still loyal to the organization do not like hearing that it has caused great harm. They might think they’ve seen “a lot” or “too much” from me, but none of them have any idea what I have had to process in private or what I held back for their sake. They have no idea how many people I have talked to and encountered in support groups and other places who experienced the same.

People like to say, “stop talking about it, and just let it go!” I have news for them: talking about it is letting go. Expression is release. Telling your story is part of healing, and I deserve to heal. And others may benefit from listening, either by learning something or by being built up according to their needs. There is great need for trauma awareness, as well as great need to support and encourage those who have suffered from others’ lack of it. Unfortunately, there will always be those who resist awareness, but that does not relieve me of my burden to spread it.

I don’t feel guilty for sharing the truth of what I’ve experienced, nor do I regret it; in fact, it has brought a sense of relief that has nothing to do with how people have or haven’t responded. This is progress. Where I once suffered from intense worry about what everyone thought of me (a common survival mechanism for an abuse survivor, not simply “pride”), my nervous system is finally beginning to learn how to settle in the knowledge that I am safe and that I am allowed to use my voice, regardless of what anyone thinks. It was not possible for me to maintain a consistent state of nervous system regulation when I was in the church. And now it is clear to me that, whether the church wants to acknowledge it or not, whether or not it was intentional on the part of individuals, the organization benefited from keeping people in states of nervous system dysregulation for years. In fact, the survival of that hierarchical business model system depended on it.

It still makes me sad and angry, when I think about this in light of the fact that church should be a place that supports healing from our wounds, rather than an environment that deepens them. But here in the past week or so, I’ve felt a subtle shift away from anger, toward something that looks more like acceptance. Resignation, maybe. It is what it is. It’s a waste of precious hope to expect anything different on a large scale. Letting go frees up capacity to invest in something healthier, more productive, and more deserving of my attention.

When I studied business to earn my accounting degree, I learned about something called the Sunk Cost Principle. This business concept dictates that you should base decisions only on future costs and benefits, ignoring resources already invested that cannot be recovered. “I know that piece of equipment is falling apart already and costing us productivity, but we spent so much money on it, we can’t replace it just yet,” would not be a valid justification for a business decision under this principle. The expense associated with that faulty piece of equipment is a sunk cost, and therefore irrelevant in deciding how to deal with the current problem. Essentially, if it is already gone, don’t let it influence your next move. Thirty years was a large investment. But it’s gone. Through my daily meditations and other interactions, God keeps whispering in my ear:

It’s a sunk cost, Lori. You learned from it; trust that there is purpose in that. Now, let go and make room for what is coming next. Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! (Isaiah‬ ‭43‬:‭18‬-‭19‬) I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. (Joel‬ ‭2‬:‭25‬)

It’s absolutely ok (and even good and right) to be angry about abuse and injustice, and it is also ok to not let go of any authentic emotion until we are ready, meaning we’ve had opportunity to process it fully. I don’t care what any church leader or religious person tells you to the contrary. Many neurodivergent people and trauma survivors process our emotions more slowly than others. We do this best in supportive environments, with tools that work for us, and on our own timetable, not someone else’s.

“Letting go” does not mean I won’t keep talking about it. I’m just tired of expending so much of my valuable emotional energy on it. I’ll keep talking about it and writing about it, but I think you will also notice a shift in what that looks like, as I focus more on talking about healing and raising individual awareness, and less on being heard by ears deafened by the roar of a giant organic machine that couldn’t care less. I believe there are people whose eyes are beginning to open. I do not hold grudges toward people who hurt me because they were caught up in the same dysfunction I was. As for those few individuals who cut me off because I trusted them with my truth, I am learning to mentally release them too, by reminding myself that they were the red pills (yeah, it took a few; I’m stubborn that way - and they were hard to swallow) that finally woke me up to the matrix. I suppose I really owe them my gratitude rather than my tears.

I’m shifting, but I’m not going anywhere. In fact, you might just see a little more of me. I hope you’ll hang around, too.