The Shame Cycle + Religious Trauma

I've worked with therapy clients for long enough to know the telltale cycle that toxic shame turns into. It is the most common reason why people come to therapy, period; and that's especially true for people with religious trauma, even if they don’t know it yet. So what is the shame cycle and what does it have to do with religion?

In normal circumstances, the shame cycle can easily go unnoticed as it slowly demoralizes us. It's even more insidious, however, when a high-control religious group teaches us that it's the way we're supposed to feel. A simple self-defeating pattern gets elevated as the ideal way of living.

At the heart of the matter, people with toxic shame operate off the assumption that their problematic behaviors are a direct representation of who they are. In other words, they conflate their core identity with their external behaviors. This flawed way of thinking inevitably leads to the false conclusion that if we make a “bad” choice, it means that we are bad. 

Unfortunately, many high-control religious groups have inadvertently magnified the harmful impacts of toxic shame and are only now beginning to grapple with the implications. Today we're dealing with the fallout of an entire generation that was raised to believe they are inadequate, unloveable, and powerless to change. As a result, they're plagued by unrealistic expectations, poor personal boundaries, and emotional self-neglect.

Sound familiar? Let's break down the shame cycle step by step:

Shaming Worldview. Something in our upbringing planted the belief that we're not good enough. We try to avoid embarrassment by giving ourselves little shame-based pep talks about how worthless, selfish, or unlovable we are. In high-control religious groups, this can masquerade behind ideas like a "sinful nature" that is disgusting to God.

Imperfection. Since we’re human beings, we inevitably make mistakes or don’t achieve our goals. Our shame-based self-talk takes these opportunities to exaggerate our imperfections, making them doubly humiliating. In high-control religious settings, many are encouraged to confess their "sins" publicly to prove their remorse.

Misinterpretation. We make false interpretations of what our mistakes say about us, allowing them to define our capability, character, or worthiness. High-control religious groups often have a knack for little catchphrases that remind us how we've fallen short, deserve condemnation, and should avoid pride at all costs.

Perfectionism. To stave off self-hatred and the horror of rejection, we decide to prove our worthiness by working harder. We try to achieve absolute perfection by never setting healthy boundaries and working ourselves into exhaustion. High-control religious groups often capitalize on the volunteer labor, monetary support, and sheer desperation to please that comes from this.

Confirmation. When our self-defeating perfectionism eventually backfires, we take it as confirmation that we’re inadequate and incapable. Instead of learning from our unrealistic expectations, we feel doomed. This is the queue for our high-control religious group to offer the one and only remedy: salvation that hinges on total obedience.

Misattribution. Now that we're in a habit of blaming all bad outcomes on ourselves, we need someone to give the credit to when things go well. We attribute all positive experiences to something or someone else, never allowing ourselves to celebrate success. High-control religious groups often use over-spiritualization to attribute all good things to God whether it makes sense or not.

Reinforcement. The shame cycle is now solidly in place, feeding and reinforcing itself each time it repeats. The moral of the story is always that we're not good enough and we don't deserve good things. In high-control religion, this makes us even more ingratiated and reliant on the group that claims to have rescued us.

If this sounds like your story, you're not alone. Even more importantly, you don't have to stay trapped. Healing from the damage of toxic shame, whether it was reinforced by religion or not, is absolutely possible! Don't let shame convince you that you're incapable of change.

- Anna

Thought Control + Self-Gaslighting

The word “gaslighting” has gotten so absurdly popular, it feels like the pop-mental health community is gaslighting us into believing that’s a real scientific term. While the word certainly needs replacing, the idea behind this trendy manipulation tactic is absolutely intriguing. If you’re not familiar, gaslighting is essentially just trying to convince someone else that they aren’t perceiving reality correctly. It’s making someone feel like they’re “the crazy one”.

Here’s an example: A cheating husband is worried that his wife is getting suspicious about his affair because she found lipstick stains on his shirt. To make sure she doubts herself, he tells her that her eyesight must be going bad because there’s no stain on his shirt at all. The wife, who’s been through this song and dance before, is conditioned to question her own sanity (and eyesight) rather  than her loving husband’s motives. Such a catch, that one!

As you can imagine, this manipulative denial of reality is deeply damaging. It’s also the foundation of most abusive relationships. High-control religious groups are no exception. When someone in spiritual authority tells you that your eyesight must be going bad, that’s huge a red flag. If they've been indoctrinating you well, you'll be primed to trust their word over your own senses.

This common thought control tactic can get even more toxic when the gaslightee starts to self-gaslight. You've successfully devoted yourself to your faith when you start believing dogma instead of your own perceptions. With daily indoctrinations, the gaslightee adopts the high-control narrative that says, “Whatever my instincts tell me to do will get me in trouble, so I just need to never trust myself and keep following instructions." Makes perfect sense, right?

For millennia our species has been refining our talent of creating an appealing narrative that explains away the mental gymnastics we’re doing. But what often starts out as a genuine effort to understand a difficult topic slowly morphs into an elaborate farce that keeps us stuck and ashamed.

In this self-defeating cycle, pride and suffering create an ever-escalating series of expectations and failures. You’re never going to be good enough, but you can never stop trying. After endless reinforcement to disconnect from your intuition and overlook glaring contradictions, you’re finally a truly devoted follower. You can now be left to judge, accuse, and punish yourself using the words that you've heard your leaders use a thousand times before. To reinforce this even further, you’ll get all kinds of validation and encouragement from the other self-gaslighters who aspire to be as self-depricating as you are.

This is why I think self-gaslighting might be the best evidence we have of an oppressive belief system. When victims become their own oppressors, the system runs like a well oiled machine. The leaders get the benefits of their group's compliance, enjoying the "blessings" they're being been given. It's amazing how effective it is to train your recruits to gaslight themselves. Gotta respect a cult leader who knows how to work smarter, not harder.

Here's the big question though: If you were one of these misled self-gaslighters, how would you know? 

Self-gaslighting begins with brainwashing so most abuse victims are oblivious to the oppressive nature of their own beliefs. They're trained instead to defend it's harmful practices in the name of a wise diety who does not seem to be subject to the natural laws of equity and respect. 

How many times have you heard an earnest believer explain away atrocities with a platitudes? Some of my favorites are: "The Lord works in mysterious ways," or "Everything happens for a reason," or "That person will be brought to justice in the afterlife," or "An unconfessed sin must be the reason why God allowed this to happen." Each of these party lines are methods to convince followers that God is in charge and there's nothing they could have done differently. The followers are so desperate for answers, they'll accept these woefully inadequate explanations.

The more I learn about thought control patterns, the more I realize how much oppression, both of myself and of others, I was voluntarily participating in. That isn't an assignment of blame but an acknowledgment that I was groomed to be an accomplice in my own abuse and the systemic dehumanization of others. At the time I belived that my instincts, emotions, and desires were evil and my only path to truth was through obedience and comformity.

I'll never forget how difficult it was to take those first steps toward accepting the painful reality that I had been misled. I'm still not finished deprograming my brain from the self-doubt that plagued me for so long. So what can we do to assess our belief systems without falling into the self-gaslighting cycle? 

The solution to gaslighting is an unflinching commitment to reality. Reality should be the foundation of our beliefs, not clever coercion. Commiting to reality means going back to the raw facts, listening to opposing views, and searching for signs that we've been more committed to a belief than to reality itself.

Actively assessing for self-gaslighting requires non-judgmental curiosity. Think of yourself an unbiased detective who's job is gather the facts, not manipulate the outcome. Here are some self-reflection questions to get us started:

Do I ever feel like I can't trust my intuition, instincts, or emotions? Why?

Am I less likely to trust my own perceptions than my leader's? Why?

Do I ever hate my own emotional reactions or wish I could turn them off? Why?

Do I ever ignore the research on a topic because my leaders have told me it's false?

Does my belief system tell me to trust my leaders solely based on their spiritual authority?

Have I been taught to habitually repeat words/phrases from my belief system to override my doubts?

Do I feel ashamed of myself when my beleifs don't make sense to me? Why?

How do I determine what the truth is? Is it acceptable for me to challenge it?

What would the consequences be if I were to deeply question my beliefs?

What conflicts of interest might inhibit someone's critical thinking when it comes to their religious beliefs?

Would I be willing to accept reality even if it forced me rethink my beliefs?

What evidence would I be willing to accept as proof that my beliefs were false?

What ulterior motives might impact the advice I get from others?

Would I rather believe something false that's familiar or something true that would turn my world upside down?

A Response to the Southern Baptist Convention Report

The investigation report on the Southern Baptist Convention's handling of sexual assault allegations was released this week. As a therapist who works primarily with religious trauma and sexual assault survivors, it was absolutely devastating to read. 

To make a horrifically long story short, leaders in the SBC were proven to have repeatedly ignored, blamed, discredited, and shamed victims of sexual violence who have made outcries over the past decades. They even had a list of known offenders who were still active in church leadership. The Guidepost report's conclusion is that the SBC's executive committee was more concerned with protecting the reputation of the SBC than they were with the actual crimes being committed and hidden. This has left untold numbers of victims invalidated and ostracized by their own religious leaders.

I'm heartbroken for a number of reasons but this doesn't just impact me professionally. It's personal. For over 18 years of my life, the Southern Baptist Convention was like my family. My parents were career missionaries, sent by the International Mission Board, an extension of the SBC, to bring the gospel to the people of the Philippines. For my whole childhood, every meal I ate and every house I lived in was paid for by donations from Southern Baptist churches. When we would visit the states every few years, my family made the rounds to dozens of Southern Baptist congregations asking for their continued generosity.

I wish I could say that I'm shocked to discover that the SBC's leadership is so corrupt, but I'm not. I lived through it myself. I doubt that my name is on their list of victims of unreported sexual assault but it should be. In my case, though, no one else silenced me. I did that myself, believing that it was what God wanted.

At eight years old I had already internalized a very profound belief: I didn't matter to God. How could I? He'd "called" my parents to a remote area of the world to spend their lives saving the lost from eternal damnation and my job was to stay out of the way. That's why, when I was molested by a stranger at 8, I didn't even consider telling my parents. I was sure that speaking up would get me in trouble for interfering with God's calling. That is the culture that the Southern Baptist Convention has been cultivating.

Over the years I've shifted the blame for my trauma a thousand times. Was it my fault somehow? Was it my parent's neglect? Was it the mission board's careless policies? Or Christianity in general? Possibly several of the above. But there's one thing I know for sure: No human being should ever, EVER feel the need to silently bear the burden of being sexually assaulted for the sake of the gospel. 

It devastates me that I ever believed I was worth so little to God, much less to my church and family. It breaks my heart to know that I wasn't the only one who had to bear that unspeakable trauma in silence. It outrages me that so many people have had their lives destroyed by an organization that claims to be doing God's work.

As people of my generation flee American evangelicalism in droves, it's infuriating to hear shock and confusion from those who are still devout. If you want to know why we're leaving, here it is: The evangelical "good news" is a slap in the face to those who have been traumatized and then silenced in the name of a loving God. I no longer attend church or profess to be a Christian, but if a good God does exist, he is undoubtedly disgusted by what this version of Christianity has become.

As we digest the news of the SBC report (only the latest in an exhausting list of similar scandals) we're bound to look for someone to blame. I pray with all of the faith that I have left that we won't let this horror be dismissed by placating statements about "some individuals" who "are not true representations" of Christian beliefs. When enough high-ranking "individuals" in an organization follow the same horrific path, it's time to stop deflecting or feigning shock. It's time to start showing compassion to those who have been silenced by tearing the offending organization down. 

If God is indeed great, he will applaud the fall of corrupt systems; even those that were in his name.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did eventually come forward about what happened. Nearly 20 years after the assault, I finally realized the implications of continuing to hide in shame. I filed an official report but too much time had gone by for any charges to be brought. What matters the most is that I'm no longer holding an innocent eight-year-old girl responsible to sacrifice her safety and emotional wellbeing for the sake of her religion. 

I deeply, truly hope that other survivors of sexual assault in religious settings will find the healing and real freedom that I have found. I hope we will finally hold the perpetrators accountable and stop letting this tragedy play out again and again.

Instinct & Reason (Why Competition Sucks)

As we continue down our path of intentional empathy, the inner caveman will inevitably have some complaints. He’s also great at getting us to listen to our basic instincts without stopping to ask reasonable questions. We don’t want to just shut him up, though. He still occasionally has some valuable input related to our survival, after all. So I think it's worth asking the question: What's wrong with relying on our instincts? That's part of what evolution is supposed to be improving right? 

As our prefrontal cortexes have evolved, our understanding of how our choices impact others has too (ie. our empathy). It's getting harder and harder to pretend that our actions don't affect the other people we share our planet with. We've begun to recognize the uncomfortable fact that instinct and reason don't always align. In fact, our most unempathetic, and ultimately self-sabotaging choices usually originate from the inner caveman’s tribalistic “us versus them” mentality.

To our instincts-driven friend, people are divided into two easy categories: those who are with "us” and those who are "others". Whenever he faces a complex problem, he's learned that he can gain a sense of control by first simplifying the matter as much as possible. First objective: Quickly determine who is the ally and who's the enemy. Objective number two: Dominate or destroy the enemy. End of plan.

This oversimplified strategy, though often gratifying, backfires any time the inner caveman's perception of who the enemy is isn’t 100% accurate. Since we can only ever see the world through our own narrow perspectives, the domination strategy ends up backfiring quite a lot. At the end of the day, adaptive and empathetic decisions will almost always require us to push beyond the inner caveman’s gut feelings.

That's why one of the greatest parts of being human is our ability to combine both instinct and reason. That's how we make adaptive decisions; how we keep evolving. Without either of these two vital components, our choices will eventually become dysfunctional. Too much reliance on our instincts leads to chaos, hoarding, and violence. Too much reliance on our cognitive reasoning leads to ambivalence, anxiety, and emotional repression. 

Our best chance at collaboration (and ultimately, survival as a species) is through finding a balance between instinct and reason to inform our decisions. Michael Karlberg articulated this well in his 2012 TEDx about the problem with having a society built on competition. He says, “the culture of contest undermines our efforts to solve the increasingly complex problems we’re facing on this planet. Solving these problems requires the highest degrees of cooperation among people with diverse insights, experiences, talents, and capacities. The culture of contest sets such people against one another. In the process, it confounds our ability to solve complex problems together. So the culture of contest, for both of these reasons, is inherently unjust and unsustainable.”

Racism, nationalism, sexism, and really any of our major societal issues, clearly demonstrate our "culture of contest". Although loving and protecting one's own group can be admirable, the inner caveman’s obsession with drawing “us versus them” lines in the sand takes protection to a frightening extreme. By fixating on archaic notions of supremacy, our inner caveman doesn't see other people groups as equals, but as rivals.

Despite mounting evidence that cooperation is essential to our collective survival (see climate change, world wars, water insecurity, etc), many of us are still clinging to the inner cavemen’s outdated dog-eat-dog mindset. Peaceful coexistence seems laughable when we're stuck in our brutal, hunger games-esque competitions to see who will come out on top. Annoyingly, we keep doubling down on rivalry when any reasonable person could see that competition and hierarchy is exactly what's tearing us apart.

Humanity’s collective origin story is all about us having to fight for our survival. That self-empathy can help us understand why the inner caveman is so obsessed with establishing dominance. His competitive urges are explainable, true, but they're no longer adaptive. As we collectively keep pretending like we're competing to be the ultimate ninja warrior, we’re missing out on the next evolutionary step that our species could be taking.

Fortunately, we are not slaves to our instincts or to our inner caveman. Our gift of reasoning has given us the ability to evolve. Listening to our instincts AND our reasoning is the only way to push beyond these maladaptive habits and finally find out what might be possible. So when are we going to quit acting like cavemen?