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What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28

February 27, 2025 / 47:35

This episode discusses the book "When Religion Hurts You" by Laura E. Anderson, focusing on themes of religious trauma, mental health, and personal growth.

Jacob Gooden shares his reflections on the book, emphasizing the importance of understanding nervous system responses to perceived threats, particularly in high-control religious environments.

He also addresses the concept of grief, detailing his experiences with the deaths of family members and how these events shaped his understanding of loss and emotional responses.

Gooden highlights various types of grief, including grieving childhood experiences and the impact of purity culture on sexuality, as well as the challenge of building self-trust and compassion.

The episode concludes with an invitation for listeners to engage with the content and share their own stories, fostering a community of support and understanding.

TLDR

Jacob Gooden reflects on religious trauma and grief from Laura E. Anderson's book, discussing personal experiences and the journey toward healing.

Episode

47:35
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what is good ex homies uh it's your boy Jacob Gooden and another week another
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ex- homeschoolers club that is the best ex- homeschoolers podcast this side of the internet and uh here we are it's me
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we're doing a solo today uh it's been a minute but uh I figured it's about time
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I don't think I've done one of these since last year and uh what are we going
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to talk about today we're actually going to talk about a book I've been reading
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called when religion hurts you this is by Laura e Anderson and this was a recommendation that came to me after I
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did my episode about uh deconstructing and uh so I'm going to get into that but before we do I got a
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quick favor to ask and that is this I'm launching a newsletter uh it's coming
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out I'm officially it's dropping this week okay first one's going out on
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Friday I want to send it to you I want to put it in your inbox and uh if you want to be a part of that newsletter
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there's going to be a link down in the description to sign up get on the waiting list it's not a waiting list but
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get on the email list and what's going to be in the newsletter I promise I'm
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not going to be spammy it's just going to be episode stuff I'll take some notes
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on it I might you know have recommendations for books I'm reading for other podcasts I'm guessing on who
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knows we we're figuring this all out together okay so but if you want that in
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your inbox I'm hoping to do it weekly uh you'll want to sign up okay so again
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links in the description down below wherever you find links uh and uh yeah but let's get into it okay so this book
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wow um I finished it a couple hours ago of as of recording this and uh man oh man this book has been
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crazy so after I did my deconstruction episode I really I started to realize that there
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was some stuff that I really hadn't dealt with yet and uh and I'm so thankful this recommendation came in
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because uh because wow this the subline for this book is healing from religious trauma and the impact of high control
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religion and before you click off and go oh he's going to go on a rant about how
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awful religion is and I'm still a Christian and whatever like this book is genuinely I think even if I was still a
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Christian I would have found this book extremely helpful just from a mental health perspective of like putting names
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to things that I was experiencing even when I was in church and really wrestling with
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um being in church because I think mental health can be a little bit separated from our religious experiences
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um and uh but let's let's get into it I want to unpack there's a lot of chapters
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in this book I think there's like 13 or 14 chapters I want to unpack some of
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them some of the things that stuck out the most to me so I'm not going to I'm
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not going to hit everything I highly again pick up the book read it yourself give me your thoughts uh that's what the
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book club's for um you know that's what emailing me shooting me a DM on socials
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as before okay but I want to just kind of hit on some of the things that spoke the most to me the number one thing that
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I ended up reading SL listening to this chapter four different times because it was so impactful there's a whole chapter
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about nervous system and it's called nervous system 101 and then there's a
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later chapter that kind of is like aligning or like balancing out your nervous system but man oh man that was
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super helpful because she talked about everyone knows about fight ORF flight for the most part right it's our
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reaction to when we're in danger right we either run away or we fight the threat right well she talked about two
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other ways and that's freeze and fwn right so we already talked about fight that's you know intimidate the threat
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right flight is you run away from the threat then there's Fawn which is to appease the threat right and you kind of
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like bend a knee a little bit submit and then there's freeze which is like make
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the threat lose interest right and that's just kind of like shut up be silent you know move on kind of a thing
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and man it just our nervous system kicks on when we feel in danger and I think in church a lot of
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times we're taught that there's this constant danger that we have to be aware
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of at all times right and we're just always on edge of like spiritual warfare
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and the devil and people outside of our religion and like all this stuff and so we're stuck in this on position and
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we're constantly reminded about this threat right the devil wants to trip you
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up and like but we're not designed to actually like exist in that state of like
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heightened awareness always right we're supposed to like come down from that and
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so the reason this really hit me was because when I started kind of when I left church I was in college and when I
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said I left church I just mean I wasn't going to church as frequently I had kind
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of burned out I was going uh like six times a week at that point I was like serving in Ministry stuff and bible
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studies and all this kind of thing and I was just exhausted um on top of that doing college right existing as a a
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grown adult for the first time ever and so I just was so tired all the time and I so I was like okay you know what
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church kind of has to take somewhat of a backseat I'm going to go when I can I'm
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still going to like read my Bible still Christian I just need a break and uh and
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I had met with a pastor and he had kind of said like something similar he was like I think you should just take a
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break right and just like take a few weeks off he was saying take a few weeks off I ended up taking over two years off
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but it it was just kind of it for the first time ever I kind of relaxed a little bit and my like my defenses went
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down a little bit and I just like I did didn't have this heightened State I didn't have as many people in my life I
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think screaming at me that there was always this threat this this imminent threat in my life and
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um and so I was starting to recognize because when you exist in that state of like always on right you're like I don't
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know if every anyone's ever had this but like you get in an argument with someone
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and you see red right and it's like you wake up from it it's almost just like
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this it's like you black out almost right and you wake up and then you find out later like you you told the person
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off like really awfully I was having kind of that right I was I had come out of this stage of
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like I was always on and I had struggled to determine what was like a major versus A Minor Threat in my life and so
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I was like finally relaxing and then more recently what I've realized is going back again to
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like fight flight freeze and fawn is this kind of like what are my reactions to when there are threats in
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my life right and I felt mostly I think into uh flight and fawn and freeze to be
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quite honest I'm not a big fighter I never have been I don't like making
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people upset very often um and so I tend to either run away or I just don't say
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anything or I just kind of like roll over right and that's that's its own
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problems and it's right um and I'm trying to look at that a little bit differently now and kind of actually put
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a name to it you know but again kind of aligning with this whole understanding of like my nervous system for so many
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years was just in the stuck on position right and um and now having like deconstructed my
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faith um you know the political times we live in having a lot more conversations
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with people I've realized that like especially when I'm talking to someone
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who still very much exists inside of religion sometimes it feels like talking to a brick wall not always but a lot of
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times and I've been wondering why that is right they get really defensive and
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and this book has kind of helped me again recognize that of like they're in the on position and maybe I'm not and so
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I don't feel like I'm coming at them with a threat right but maybe they're in
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that on position where they're struggling to determine that this is not a major threat to them this is just me
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pointing something out right or asking questions um cuz that's where I exist right now
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you know as an agnostic that's I'm in the question asking era of my life I guess is the way I look at it
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and so anyway that's the nervous system that again super impactful for me and
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just recognizing and again putting more words and and Concepts together for me to kind of sit here and go okay this is
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why I react this way and this is you know when I actually do need to Implement like fight flight frakas Fawn
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right trying to look at that and assess the major versus minor threats so that was kind of the first chapter that
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really stuck out of me the second one and I'm probably going to go on this for
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a little while was grieving the life you once had and this was a hard chapter for me I
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actually I'll be honest with you guys I tried to record this episode yesterday
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and I was getting super emotional doing it because I had written out my notes and I was kind of talking about this
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concept that I just like wanted to go curl up in a corner and cry about it so my understanding of grief for a
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long time was that was primarily tied to the death of someone right a loved one someone precious to you and I kind of I
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think also had some preconceived notions about what grief looked like right like
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how long is it you know and it it varies right it's kind of dependent on maybe
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how close you are with the person and you know and then what does it look like it's mostly sad right but
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you're like when you're when you exist in a lot of religious circles there's a
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happiness to it right because the suffering is over they're in a better place if you believe in an afterlife
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right and so it's kind of like this weird you could be sad and mad and happy
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and just joyful and like all these weird emotions come into play and so one of the things I've been unpacking
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a lot more recently in my life is kind of like I have three significant deaths in my in the last decade of my life or
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so and and how the I wanted to look at how the grief in all of those has been very different right and
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so so let's talk about it I guess in 2014 literally the week before I graduated high school my my grandma good
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she died just like suddenly out of nowhere she was like completely healthy or so we thought and they just died on
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like a Saturday morning kind of a deal and with that death I held this weird regret for a long time because just a
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few days before her death she had tried to call me and I had ignored it because I was like I'm going to see her in a
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week it's not a big deal I was busy with something else and I didn't call her
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back and I was like it's not a big deal so for a long time I held this regret of
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wishing I had just picked up the phun right and had been able to have this last conversation with this
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person and but I so I was kind of angry right I had this like anger grief I had this
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sadness right I I was like it was the first grandparent to die for me and it was sad it was just really really
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hard it was like I hadn't experienced that before right and I was 18 and um I think what was hard too was like we
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weren't super close but I held this regret right because we could have been closer and if
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I just picked the phone maybe that would have been the conversation and I think I
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still hold on to some of this regret um working on it okay uh but it was a long time before I
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really felt I think any kind of like sense of normaly about that whenever I would come up and i' think about it
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right I just kind of would get sad and upset a little bit and so so yeah for a long time I just was
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grieving it I think so much so that it led into the next death and that was uh that was my nanny in 2017 she died and
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that's my mom's mom and very different situation that death we saw coming um she'd been
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diagnosed with ALS it was the slow progression from like being completely there to having trouble walking to if
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you don't know what ALS is it's l Garrick's disease basically just shuts
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down your body piece by piece and so so we had already kind of gotten to this point of like it was hard to talk to her
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if at all she was by the end we couldn't even talk to her um she couldn't walk
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she was in a wheelchair you know all these things and so the the grandma that I'd grown up with was was dead long
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before she actually died um but that Grandma I was very close with I would spend most of my summer
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with her she was there for like everything in my life birthdays and theater stuff and holidays
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and I I joke with my cousins that I'm her favorite grandson it's just true if you guys are
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listening um it's just true I was her favorite grandkid can't convince me
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otherwise um but we had this very special bond and we just I don't know there's something about our spirits that
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just really aligned and so when she died I think it dragged up again that grief from the first Grandma
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passing away who I had sobbed over right for years for three years at that point um
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and then this Grandma I just don't I nanny I just don't remember crying that
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much about it I remember being sad and I remember being angry and and but I was it was hard to for me to shed
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tears right and I feel like I numbed myself for that death and I just kind of like buckled up
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and just did the thing right I just was like I'm a man just pushed through it
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and that that was unhealthy um to say the least the other thing that's interesting about a lot of about those
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two deaths in particular is that they're also like right around big events in my
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life so 2014 graduating high school about to move to college 2017 I literally graduated
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college drove directly from college to my grandma's house saw her for a few weeks and then she died right before my
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21st birthday so big milestones in there also mixed in so again you've got this crazy
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mix of emotions of like you have the sadness and you have the grief and you have the anger and you have the the the
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mad right and the overwhelming feelings mixed in with all these Happy Feelings of like I'm accomplishing things in my
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life I'm moving forward um and then you tack on again the religious aspect of
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like they're in a better place you know there's no more suffering and and and
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all of that it's the we celebration of life right and joy and happiness and stuff so it's just a weird place to be
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in and then 2020 to I lost my grandpa goodon again kind of suddenly um got a phone call that he had a stroke
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and was in the hospital was basically non-responsive and it was just a matter of time before he
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passed and the grief for that one was so much different because there was no sadness actually I take that
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back it didn't feel like there was sadness originally I was angry I was really mad not because he was dead well
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kind of because he was dead not because he had died or that I missed him and I loved
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him so much and and stuff like that but because he was someone who had hurt me who had hurt members of my family and I
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we never I never got the resolution that I wanted and so there was this like sadness about the fact that that was
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never going to be resolved now what I've come to learn is that you don't need another person to
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always heal the wounds within yourself right that's a choice you get to work on
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for yourself but at the time didn't maybe 100% know that so I was just angry and
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even like at his funeral and stuff it was just a lot of anger a lot of anger um so was my first time back in a church
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for a while so that was its own set of things um so to hear that this person who would
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hurt me who' caused me grief who would hurt my family you hear people say like
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he's in a better place there's no more suffering he's a good guy like all this
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stuff when like that's not your reality that's its own you know Whirlwind of emotions right
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and cuz that's just not how I knew him right so the grief from that one was again anger so you have like you know
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2014 grief of like sadness and regret 2017 you have this numbing grief and then 2022 you have this like Angry grief
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right so just two three very different looking grief Seasons but that's in a nutshell what I
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kind of thought grief was right it was just associated with like death um and one of the things that got
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brought up in this book is that there's these different types of grief that we
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experience and it was like an aha moment for me so we're kind of jumping a little
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bit those obviously those deaths very impactful for me still working through them if you can't
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tell but then now I'm I'm starting to have these emotions I'm trying to
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recognize especially now starting this podcast and talking to a bunch of you and and learning your stories and recog
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ing things within my own education and upbringing things that I would do differently
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um I I have had these strong emotions um in upset in my life recently and I've
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been experiencing like this weird burnout and just kind of like weirdly emotional all the time you
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know the littlest things set you off right I haven't had 100% the tools and the words to kind of like FL flush it
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out and so but this book brought up the idea of other grief right so a few of them just
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to highlight the few that I I have recognized I'm struggling with is like the grief of childhood and as
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adolescence and this is one I'm still kind of unpacking right I'm kind of like
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determining I don't even know if I have this right but it's it's kind of this
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idea that like I wasn't afforded certain things in my childhood and my adolescence that I should have been
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given and being upset about that and so for me and for I think a lot of homeschoolers one of the things we
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grieve is sometimes education some of us don't have the best education this is why I'm on the fence
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about it because I don't think my education was that bad but there are definitely things in my education that I
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wish had done been done better right so so I don't know Science and History are those main two
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things in there but I know for some of my friends um they're forced to grow up really
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quickly homeschool families tend to have a lot of kids right and sometimes older
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kids you know teach teach the younger kids and parent the younger kids so to speak and I think there I grew up in a
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house I remember I've recognized this Within Myself for a long time my sister and I were always kind of
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applauded for being well behaved and I've wrestled with that a a little bit because yeah to some degree
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yeah you want kids to be well behaved but at the same degree like what does that mean right and again
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this is why I'm I'm on the fence about whether I'm grieving this or not but
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just some things I've been thinking about the the next thing I'm just going
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to move on moving on cuz we're still un packing that one okay griev sexuality and
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uh this is an interesting one as someone who grew up imp Purity culture is this like upset feeling sometimes about the
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lack of sex head right and something that I've realized is that before I really
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had really inkling of what sex was any sex education I was already being taught like the Purity culture education that
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sex and sexuality were like bad words you know only within the context of marriage and and things like that and
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so without that original context of understanding what sex is how does it operate what is it meant
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for it kind of distorts everything right so then when when you are given that Fuller sex education it's like confusing
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because you already have this preconceived notion of it's bad or it's evil or it's wicked right except for in
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the context of marriage and only between a man and a woman and so so I would argue right that we learn
00:22:49
them out of order right I think you need to have a better understanding of of sex
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before you can have the conversation about perod culture I don't think everything inside of I this is a
00:23:00
controversial take right here I don't think everything inside of Purity culture is like bad um from the
00:23:07
perspective of I don't think you should just have sex to have sex right I think it should
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it's more than that it's a connection with somebody this a de it's a deeper
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connection with somebody um that's the like one golden good thing I pull out of
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Purity culture basically um but yeah I realized that I've kind of like been grieving that in a way because
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I think there's a lot of lost years maybe not that many last years but there's a lot of teenage years where I
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think not that I should have been experimenting with sex or anything like that but I think it should not have been
00:23:48
this big bad scary thing it should have actually been something that we had conversation about right and there was
00:23:55
some back and forth and exchanging of ideas right um and so I agree with that aspect of it it's like why didn't we why
00:24:01
weren't we talking about this why wasn't this an open concept um and topic
00:24:07
um so because even to to to this day right it's still difficult to talk about
00:24:12
sex right it's just Taboo it's you know but um yeah so again we're still unpacking right I just
00:24:21
finished this book an hour or two ago right um so a lot of this is still mulling around and we're still on I
00:24:28
think it's years before any of it really becomes fully clear but um but let's
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move on okay next one grieving our view of others in the world this was one I instantly clocked
00:24:45
of like being sad about stuff and I've kind of known this I think maybe for a
00:24:50
little while um when I got to college it was the first time I ever really experienced a wider divers
00:24:59
diverse group of people right and I moved California beachs of California to little toown Illinois right off the
00:25:08
border of St Louis it was right um at the height of uh some some massive shootings that were
00:25:19
really nasty um there's a lot of racial tension and and things like that um but I had these weird I I recognized
00:25:32
pretty quickly I had these weird views about people and I'm thankful that I met
00:25:36
people in college who called me out on some of it uh to be honest uh but who were safe enough to want to
00:25:45
have that conversation with me and push me to be like less racist and and less Rel religiously Prejudice right to
00:25:54
towards other people um because that was just something I had I had grown up again we go back
00:26:01
to kind of that like teaching of there's always this enemy The Outsider is the
00:26:06
enemy um you know they want to pull you away from God they they are you know being led by the devil they want to take
00:26:13
you down that path right and so that that was my view of anything that wasn't
00:26:18
the same as me right we get we attract sameness we're attracted to sameness a
00:26:23
lot of times um because it feels safe and so I went long time I think existing in that um and even to this day it's
00:26:34
still easier for me to go find sameness with people than it is for me to push myself outside of those boundaries of of
00:26:41
comfortability um and and to have just a a broader view of the outside world and
00:26:46
that like people are not out to get me a lot of times um you know they're also
00:26:51
struggling with their own things and when I can recognize that in people I can have compassion for them right
00:27:00
so and understanding so that's kind of that um grieving the good okay this is
00:27:08
the last kind of grief piece I want to touch on I know the section's kind of
00:27:12
been robust um and maybe a little all all over the place so I appreciate you guys if you're still listening and kind
00:27:20
of piecing anything together from my what seems like incoherent rants sometimes um but grieving the good is
00:27:27
kind of this next this last piece of grief I want to talk about and that's man that has been an interesting
00:27:34
one to unpack so so grieving the good is coming to this place of recognizing now
00:27:42
that I've left religion maybe it wasn't all bad right I think we we tend to have this pendulum
00:27:50
effect when we're inside of religion or we we exit religion where we exist let me back up religion tends to
00:27:59
exist Christian the Christianity that I grew up in existed a lot inside this binary of good and bad okay so when I'm
00:28:07
in Christianity this is all good this is good all of this is bad right we just talked about this you know anybody
00:28:13
outside of it anybody that's not the same is bad different evil Wicked don't
00:28:19
we we're over here stay in your lane kind of a thing and when I aced religion it would
00:28:25
have been really easy to pendulum just to the other side right and just it just switch them right so this is no longer
00:28:32
bad this is good this is bad and what's taken a really long time to kind of come around to is that there
00:28:39
was still good that existed in my religious experience I mourn the times of like I
00:28:47
find myself saying this a lot I'm like I mourn like playing on the worship team
00:28:51
right being in the worship band and like the music and that that aspect right I miss like after church lunch with
00:28:57
friends and like I miss this and I you know the community aspect and like seeing people every week at this
00:29:04
determined time and this determin location that was like safe I'm also one of those people more introverted I like
00:29:12
the same you know I want a regimen and routine that kind of a thing so religion kind of played my favor in that way and
00:29:19
so when I left well I won't say I necessarily the pendulum swung all the way to the other
00:29:26
side I will say that I felt lonely right I I grieved I missed those things I missed
00:29:38
the community I missed the the safety of a lot of it and I felt like I was alone I didn't have those things
00:29:50
provided to me any longer by an organized religion they were they were things that I had to learn that I had to
00:29:57
seek out for for myself now the problem with sometimes seeking those things out is like one
00:30:04
that's like really [ __ ] hard um but two the ability to trust people when you exit religion can be
00:30:16
really hard because I've been vulnerable with all these people right who have existed
00:30:22
inside this church they know some of my deepest darkest Secrets maybe not all of them
00:30:28
but they know a good amount right they know me as a person um and not that this was my experience but
00:30:40
I know that you know sometimes when you exit religion there's kind of this excommunication involved I experienced
00:30:48
less of that when I exited religion I experienced more of that when I left for college right I just wasn't in people's
00:30:54
lives anymore on a regular basis and they kind of forgot about me and so I kind of
00:30:58
to be honest kind of dealt with that already and that feeling of excommunication out of a group of people
00:31:04
but I had trouble like when I came back or I'm sorry I had trouble once I left religion 100% to like trust people
00:31:16
because I also felt unsafe trusting people who still existed in that religion I didn't want to tell them what
00:31:23
I was thinking or what I was doing or anything like that because I was afraid that they were still going to be like
00:31:30
well that's against God's word that's you know you should come back you know
00:31:33
church is great this is you know and I was going to get sucked back in and so it it's taken a long time and I I'll
00:31:42
be honest I don't think I'm 100% there always with people but I'm I'm learning
00:31:46
to trust much more um and have faith in people be vulnerable with them I mean hey I'm
00:31:56
talking to you know how many people watch listen to this you know you're you're getting it raw okay
00:32:04
um and this show has been a great opportunity to test those Waters of trusting people again right we're remain
00:32:10
vulnerable on the show so that was kind of grief again I know super long-winded I apologize I
00:32:19
hope it was somewhat coherent I hope you got something out of it there's one last
00:32:24
chapter I want to talk about before we wrap things up and that is boundaries built on a foundation of self trust and
00:32:32
self-compassion and so man self trust and self-compassion where do I even want to
00:32:41
start with this I have realized particularly this year but for sure at the end of last
00:32:50
year that I do I use I struggle with using degrading language towards myself okay there's a voice in my head that
00:33:00
tells me I'm stupid no one's listening to you like you messed up again um just like nasty stuff stuff I
00:33:09
would never say to just like a normal person right like I just I would never do that to you I wouldn't you know
00:33:22
um even even if I was being blunt I I just don't think I would I would do that
00:33:27
kind of a thing at least in a at least in a degrading way let's say that you
00:33:31
know it's one thing to just be like oh you're being stupid right and kind of
00:33:34
laugh it off but um but I've been sitting with it and kind of journaling on it and mulling
00:33:41
over this like where's this voice coming from what is this thing right because
00:33:44
it's really cropped up a lot more recently for me um and I've thought back a few times to
00:33:54
experiences inside of church maybe they gave me some of this and so there's just one instance
00:34:02
in that came back recently uh when I was a kid I went to a Baptist Church we had uh we're very legalistic
00:34:12
in the way we ran things we had like church Council and we all voted on everything was like church Run Like You
00:34:19
Know by democracy kind of a thing and um anyway we had a church meeting and uh we
00:34:27
were discussing how to attract young adults and young families to our church keep in mind I'm
00:34:33
probably early teenage years anywhere I would say anywhere from like 11 to 13 at
00:34:40
this point somewhere in there um and I had been going to this church for uh man at least since I was like seven eight
00:34:47
years old something like that um I got baptized in this church I like served at this church you know I've done it all at
00:34:54
this church I've stacked chairs I've served on the worship team I run PowerPoint you know all all this stuff
00:35:00
um children's church all that stuff and so I spoke up I gave my opinion right I
00:35:06
said hey I think we need this right I was a big advocate for like we needed to update worship we'd sing a lot of hymns
00:35:11
was really old school lots of organ lots of piano and I remember this church Elder basically telling me like that's
00:35:18
not it like don't listen to him that's like he doesn't know he's talking about
00:35:23
and uh and when this thought when this memory kind of like came back to me I was like Bingo that's it right that's
00:35:31
like where one of those mean comments comes from it's like sit down like no one's listening to you like shut up kind
00:35:36
of comes from potentially partly that and I was like damn that like hurts right but the thing
00:35:50
that's been great about recognizing that memory has been that that voice now in
00:35:56
my head doesn't sound like me any longer so when it crops up it doesn't sound
00:36:01
like my voice it sounds like this crotchety old man um and it's a lot easier to tell it to leave me alone or
00:36:10
that like that opinion doesn't matter and so there's that the other thing
00:36:20
growing up in church as an Evangelical Christian I realize too that a lot of our faith is based on this idea of
00:36:28
humans are evil they're Wicked like without God they like can't make the right decision
00:36:37
basically right and we could never choose good right we would always choose the wrong choice
00:36:44
without God and so these kind of go into like teaching yourself not to trust yourself
00:36:52
and not to show compassion to yourself because you're like not deserving of those things right like you can't trust
00:36:56
yourself because you can't actually make a smart decision right and you can't
00:36:59
show yourself compassion because you just actually don't deserve to have that
00:37:04
compassion and so again we go back to that voice in the head that's saying you're stupid saying
00:37:11
like I can't believe you've done that right I can't trust you to do anything
00:37:16
correctly it's like damn okay again where are those voices coming from who who are those voices
00:37:26
right and once you kind of sure to recognize that it's not your own voice saying those things it's it's somebody
00:37:30
else who's been kind of feeding That Into You becomes a little bit easier to
00:37:36
like ignore it or at least like recognize I mean the recognition that it's not you is like huge let me just
00:37:44
say that right off the bat because it then for me it just no longer sounds like me so I wanted to read something from
00:37:53
the book um she references ber Brown this the cool thing about this book is there's
00:38:00
just lots of resources within here like I have a whole another book list like just literally based off of the
00:38:05
resources in here um and some of it is like psychology like uh you know uh experiments not experiments but you know
00:38:15
like tests and and and results and stuff like that um and some of it is uh some of it is like other books about you know
00:38:26
PTSD and trauma and all those types of things and so anyway again pick this up read this book
00:38:33
so here let me get let me flip to this page where are we almost there almost there here we go okay so she references
00:38:43
beray Brown this is from Super Soul sessions the anatomy of trust which is a video series she
00:38:51
did and brne outlines these seven key components of trust and so they are are as follows okay here's the seven things
00:39:00
you need to have a healthy trust um yeah healthy trustful like relationship with someone including
00:39:08
yourself right you need to have these with yourself so number one is boundaries I respect my boundaries and
00:39:14
when I'm not clear about what's okay and not okay I reflect I'm willing to say no
00:39:20
do I respect my own boundaries was I clear about what's okay and not okay reliability
00:39:29
you do what you say you'll do this means staying aware of your compet competenc
00:39:34
competencies can't talk oh my gosh uh competencies and limitations so you don't overpromise and are able to
00:39:41
deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities am I reliable do I do what I say I was going to do number
00:39:49
three is accountability do you own your mistakes apologize and make amends so do I own my mistakes do I
00:39:57
apologize and do I make amends number four is the Vault you don't share information or experiences
00:40:05
that are not yours to share so do I respect the Vault for myself and for others and do I share
00:40:13
appropriately next one is integrity you choose courage over comfort you choose what is right over what is fun fast and
00:40:21
easy and you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them so do I act for from a place of
00:40:29
Integrity number six is non-judgmental I can ask for what I need and others can ask for what they need we can talk about
00:40:37
how we feel without judgment do I ask for what I need so and then these are I realized I
00:40:44
didn't explain how this list is set up very well but the scriptor and then these questions to ask yourself of do I
00:40:49
ask for what I need am I non-judgmental towards myself about needing help you cannot judge yourself for needing help
00:40:56
and not judge others for needing help and then number seven is giving the most generous assumption you extend the
00:41:04
most generous interpretation possible for the intentions words and actions of yourself giving the benefit of the doubt
00:41:11
so do I give myself the benefit of the doubt am I generous in my assumption about myself right these are the
00:41:16
questions we need to ask ourselves when you can start to kind of heal these things right inside of
00:41:26
yourself and figure out this trust situation build this healthy trust within yourself you know I'm reading
00:41:32
this and I'm like recognizing these own things in my in myself as I'm doing
00:41:37
it um it's hard it's not easy like like this is a lifelong journey a lot of us
00:41:49
are going to be on to to do this stuff right it's not going to be perfect it's
00:41:53
going to be really messy um it's going to be really messy for me I just know that about myself
00:42:00
because for so long I think I've told myself like you're not good enough and I
00:42:04
don't trust myself I don't trust my intuitions right and so bringing all of that into
00:42:12
alignment is going to be really tough right and so once I get there this is one of my goals for 2025 is hopefully
00:42:21
getting closer and closer to having more self trust and self-compassion but is kind of set being able to set those new
00:42:29
boundaries for myself right and ask myself what is it that I need right listening to what my body is like
00:42:37
needing from me and so um you know and you can't really have healthy boundaries without having that
00:42:46
trust and compassion for yourself and so you know I'm getting there let's just I'll
00:42:53
leave it at that okay I'm getting there now before we leave this thing I got to
00:42:59
touch on boundaries just a little bit because I've looked at boundaries I think wrong for a really long time um
00:43:06
and I knew that 2025 going into 2025 I knew it was going to be the year of boundaries they're shifting in my career
00:43:13
shifting in my personal life um the shifting Within Myself um and and that's like a big thing to
00:43:22
recognize because for a long time I always felt like boundaries were these like inflexible rigid set things right
00:43:28
again we go back to that analogy right church is good everything outside of it is bad okay all the Lessons Learned in
00:43:34
church good follow the rules do the things they're very set they're no there's no changing it's just that is
00:43:41
what it is right so there these inflexible things and I felt like those were my boundaries right for a very long
00:43:47
time they're these immovable things again binary black and white yes no good
00:43:54
bad I think there's a lot of gray space to be really for real I I just think
00:44:01
there's a lot of gray space in between those and what I'm realizing is that
00:44:05
boundaries for me look different than boundaries for you they look different than boundaries from your neighbor they
00:44:10
look different from boundaries from your spouse from your partner from your friends
00:44:16
right so instead of looking at them as like these dos and don'ts what I want to
00:44:21
do is kind of reflect on my own beliefs and the and the things that I value in my life
00:44:27
and I want to like set them according to that and I also want to be able to change and evolve over time and
00:44:36
to allow those boundaries to adjust and change there are lots of things that I could have shared today that are just
00:44:42
not things that I'm ready to talk about there's probably things that I wasn't ready to talk about that I shared
00:44:48
anyways and that's me breaking a pound so yeah we're learning okay that's the
00:44:58
whole point of this episode we're learning we're growing we're evolving
00:45:02
we're healing if you're not religious and you don't have religious trauma like I do
00:45:09
um you know thank the Universe um do a happy dance if you're hearing this and you're
00:45:17
like I've got some of that I I can't say how much this book has been incredibly helpful and at least
00:45:26
just recognizing and identifying things within myself I know that there's a lot
00:45:30
of other books there's a lot of other teachers there's a lot of other therapies there's a lot of other things
00:45:35
that I can do that I can continue to grow um that I want to do and I'm going to do them it's going
00:45:43
to be messy and it's going to be gross and it's going to be hard but I'm going
00:45:47
to do them and I highly encourage you guys to do them as well so again that was a lot hope it
00:45:55
wasn't too much um I hope I didn't lose too many of you along the way or if you
00:45:59
had to pause that you come back um and again this is just scratching the surface of what we can unpack I just
00:46:07
picked three chapters out of this 13 14 chapter bug right to focus on these are the things that I felt like most
00:46:13
impacted me were just like I had the strongest gut reaction to these things and um yeah and I'm excited to hopefully
00:46:23
update you guys as I go through this this year and kind of grow and change and evolve and be a different person so
00:46:31
um I think that's it I think I'm going to leave you with that okay and um you
00:46:36
know I guess before I say goodbye do me a favor if you've made it this far like
00:46:41
engage with this content okay whether it's liking the video or commenting or
00:46:46
subscribing or giving a five star review or anything like that um following me on
00:46:52
socials exhs Club pretty much all the socials you know or just picking up your phone shooting me an email exhs
00:47:00
[email protected] share your story share what you're working on maybe you disagree with me that's okay
00:47:05
too um that's it I think that's all I got okay so till next week peace [Music]
00:47:26
[Music]

Episode Highlights

  • Launching a Newsletter
    He announces the launch of his newsletter and invites listeners to sign up.
    “I promise I’m not going to be spammy.”
    @ 00m 41s
    February 27, 2025
  • Nervous System Insights
    He reflects on the impact of understanding his nervous system's responses.
    “Our nervous system kicks on when we feel in danger.”
    @ 04m 10s
    February 27, 2025
  • Exploring Grief
    He discusses different types of grief he's experienced over the years.
    “Grief is not just tied to death; it can be complex and varied.”
    @ 18m 20s
    February 27, 2025
  • Grieving Lost Years
    Reflecting on the emotional toll of not discussing sex openly during formative years.
    “I think there’s a lot of lost years.”
    @ 23m 31s
    February 27, 2025
  • The Challenge of Trust
    Exploring the difficulty of trusting others after leaving a religious community.
    “It’s taken a long time to trust people again.”
    @ 31m 46s
    February 27, 2025
  • Messy Journey Ahead
    Acknowledging that personal growth and healing will be a challenging process.
    “It’s going to be really messy.”
    @ 41m 55s
    February 27, 2025
  • Embracing Change
    The speaker reflects on personal growth and the importance of evolving boundaries.
    “We're learning, we're growing, we're evolving, we're healing.”
    @ 44m 58s
    February 27, 2025
  • The Messy Journey
    Acknowledging that growth is challenging, the speaker encourages listeners to embrace the process.
    “It's going to be messy and it's going to be hard, but I'm going to do them.”
    @ 45m 47s
    February 27, 2025

Episode Quotes

  • I want to unpack... some of the things that stuck out the most to me.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28
  • You don’t need another person to always heal the wounds within yourself.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28
  • I think there’s a lot of lost years.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28
  • It’s taken a long time to trust people again.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28
  • It’s going to be really messy.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28
  • We're learning, we're growing, we're evolving, we're healing.
    What Do You Do When Religion Hurts You? | #28

Key Moments

  • Solo Episode00:16
  • Book Discussion00:26
  • Grieving Loss09:17
  • Grieving Lost Years23:31
  • Questioning Discussions24:00
  • Personal Growth43:39
  • Evolving Boundaries44:05
  • Engagement Call46:39

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown