S4: E19 - Second Wave Fundamentalism with Dr. Laura Anderson
Second Wave Fundamentalism is a term acknowledging that we can leave fundamentalist spaces, but they do not always leave us. How do we recognize when we are creating the same pattern—and the same spaces—we tried to leave behind? And how do we care for ourselves, and our own trauma healing, so we don’t migrate toward, and recreate, the unsafe communities we fought so hard to escape?
Dr. Laura Anderson is the cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute, and founder of Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery she’s a licensed therapist, and professor of psychology. Instagram//Facebook: @drlauraeanderson
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Transcript is unedited for typos and misspellings
Katherine: [00:00:00] I have been looking forward to chatting with you for a couple months actually. I'm calling it second wave fundamentalism. I dunno if that's an official term. I don't know if I read that somewhere on Instagram. Yeah. But it's actually really personal.
I was gonna talk to you about purity culture, and then I saw the stuff that you were posting on your Instagram about just leaving fundamental spaces, taking fundamentalism with us into these other spaces. And it's, it's really personal for me. It's also just in the work that I do with survivors of abuse from churches, which are typically fundamentalists.
Yes. And I am watching, it's a very small world. It's a very small community. A lot of us know each other and I'm watching these little communities pop up . And intent to care for survivors. Yeah. And then the same things start happening in those communities. [00:01:00] Yeah. And a couple weeks ago I was , I had just gotten off the phone with someone who was telling me about another situation, and then I called another friend and I was very disheartened and I was crying on the phone.
Cause I was , what do we do? What do we do? And as I'm talking to her, I feel my body. I feel the pull to want an answer. I'd write an answer to say all we need is accountability, or all we need is this Bible. This is how it happens. Yeah. I'm so, I'm dysregulated and I want someone to tell me what to do.
Yeah. I do these things. Yes. Then everything will be. Yes. And that I was , that's it, that's the pull, that's what pulls us to this and why we keep going back to this and why it makes so much sense as trauma survivors. We’re creating [00:02:00] this. So I've been so excited to talk to you about it because I'm very much enjoying your Instagram material and first of all, how would you describe fundamental fundamentalism? Yeah. If you describe fundamentalism and high control religious groups. Kind of the same thing.
Laura: Yeah. The term fundamentalism but it's traditionally subscribed to religion, but I don't think religion has the corner market on it.
We see this in so many spaces. The way I’d define fundamentalism is a way of thinking and relating to others and to the world. And it's a very rigid set of rules that guarantee specific outcomes or are at least supposed to lead to specific outcomes. And so that doesn't have to be exclusive to religion.
We see this in wellness groups. We see this in different communities that prescribe specific ways of eating or exercising. We see this in [00:03:00] spirituality groups. We see this in political groups. We see this in families. We see this all over the place. Fundamentalism is not just for religion.
But of course we see it within religion. And so there's a huge crossover. I sometimes use the terms interchangeably, high control, religion, fundamentalism, but we're looking at dynamics of power and control within that system. So here's the rules that you must follow, what you must believe, how you must think, how you must act, dress, eat, feel, all the things if you don't it, it could be anything from, you're not accepted as a part of this group to you have sin in your life that you must repent of all the way to, we don't believe you're a true believer.
You're going to hell or we're disfellowshipping you or excommunicating you from our church. And so we see that a lot, especially in the spaces that we're working in. People are now coming out of that and going, wow, everything was so prescriptive. There wasn't room for autonomy or individuality, free [00:04:00] thought, critical thinking, anything that.
So fundamentalist groups really. Remove all of that for a list of prescriptive living and thinking and relating. And I would say that typically it doesn't start as a power grab or as a control grab. It starts to meet a human need for certainty, right? We want to feel safe and stable. That's a human need.
And we believe as humans we're evolved to this point of thinking, oh, that would come through. You do this and you do this and you do this. This provides a sense of certainty, which gives us the illusion of safety. And fundamentalism gets it. They go, yeah, we can do that. So let's just prescribe all this and then we're good to go.
But it always goes further than just that, you know, it starts off as something that feels really almost liberating cuz now I have these rules for living. And then it turns into that taking over my life and I now [00:05:00] really don't exist. I just am kind of a cog in this system.
Katherine: Yeah. And I have so many just examples in my mind. But would you, could you give just an example of a, a real time, this is an example of fundamentalism.
Laura: Within the church context or outside of or both?
Katherine: Both.
Laura: So, you know, we see this a lot. You know, purity culture is something that I've been talking about a little bit more. So purity culture is very prescriptive.
Here is, first of all, very defined roles of gender. Here's what each gender must look, sound, act and all these things. If you don't do that, there are differing consequences for what, what it is that you have done. Whether it is you're supposed to be a submissive woman and you're not, well, that means you're probably not gonna get a godly husband because you're not respectful.
You can't, nobody, you won't let anybody lead you, [00:06:00] right? So that's this I, this here's this way to date, and if you do it this way, you're gonna get this godly marriage without this world sex and everything is gonna be perfect. So that would be an example of fundamentalism in a religious context.
Outside of a religious context I think something we see a lot are within social justice issues or politics where we'll say if you wanna be a true ally of this group, you have to do these things. You have to say these things. You have to post these things. You have to have this response.
You must speak out at least this many times. You must have this number of different diversities in your personal life, in your professional life. You must believe these things about these social justice or political issues. And if you don't, you're not a safe person. You're not a part of our group.
You're too woke, you're too, you're a sheep, you are a you know, too conservative. We have these different [00:07:00] terms, right? And, and so then basically there's a, a prescriptive box of, if you want to be on whatever the right side is, here's the way that you live and think and eat and breathe.
And outside of that, you are a dangerous person. So if you don't follow these rules. Be determined by who knows who. Right. Right. You're not a safe person. Just in the church, if you don't follow these rules, they may not use the word safe, you're not a safe person, but they might say you're sinning, you're not a true believer.
Right. So there's, there's this really sharp cutoff. If you don't do these things, there's this consequence that leads towards disconnection.
Katherine: Yeah. And the floundering, I'm really glad that you gave the outside of religious space example because in that, in that, what would draw someone to that environment and to the book that says you must do this, or the [00:08:00] YouTube videos or whatever is gonna be somebody who really wants to do the right thing. Absolutely. Yeah. They're looking for, you are an expert, you've studied this, tell me what you do. Yeah. So it makes sense that we get sucked in. Yeah. It just makes sense.
Laura: Well, and when you think about it, so many people have grown up inside of a high control fundamentalist religious space. Right? One of the things we know that is not usually taught is critical thinking. Right? There's prescriptive thinking. Right. Here's what we believe in every single thing.
So as long as you just follow those rules, you're quote unquote good inside the system. But there's no space for curiosity. There's no space for thinking outside that, asking questions, having doubts, being uncertain, checking different things out. So those are muscles that haven't been worked and flexed before, right?
So when we get out of those spaces, we may be able to [00:09:00] cognitively say, I don't want to, oh, that's not how I wanna live my life anymore. That's, I wanna be able to be free to think and ask questions and, and really truly mean that. But when push comes to shove, when all we know is prescriptive fundamentalist beliefs, That is the most familiar, easy thing to slide into just with a different message.
Right. So it's not necessarily because you're wanting to be controlled by somebody else's beliefs about what the world should be, it's just going, I've never even developed skills. Yeah. Of how to reflect on how to be a critical thinker, how to tune into my body, how to say no, how to employ curiosity, look to see where's a balance area.
Why do I believe certain things? Is that right? For me, that's just devoid. There's not a skillset there. And so it is a very scary place to be, right? You feel the ground is falling out underneath you. Though we may not love all the fundamentalist rules, it [00:10:00] does provide at least the illusion of certainty and stability.
And so when we have somebody else then outside of a religion promoting that and we go, I don't this way this, that I feel internally because I don't have these rules anymore, then those other things start, start to become really appealing because they provide, again, that illusion of safety and stability and certainty.
And that again, then goes back to this very human need. Yeah, kinda crazy.
Katherine: Well, yeah. And then the, the, the second wave fundamentalism is doing the exact opposite. In the same way. Yes. And in my world, we are activists against abuse in the church. But it just becomes this also very militant, a lot of gatekeeping, just a lot of the same things.
Yeah. Yeah. Just against [00:11:00] that told us to be against the other.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm sure, you know, I don't wanna make assumptions, but you may have noticed in say deconstruction or post faith or post religion, religious communities there have been from time to time I call 'em CBOs and it's almost always around some of this, who are you, quote unquote, allowed to listen to who is quote unquote allowed to speak, who have been determined to be the people that have wisdom and insight and who have been the people that have been determined by who knows, you know, who's dangerous, who's unsafe, who's harmful.
And so, yeah, I mean, we see this all the time, and I don't think it's coming again from this place of people going, I wanna control all the people coming out of religion. We're just replicating what's been taught to us and not recognizing how fundamentalism lives in our bodies, and then we just promote it over and over again.
That's why I think cognitive deconstruction [00:12:00] is so important, but if you don't connect the body to it, we might. Certain things, but our body is still functioning the same as it did in fundamentalism, and that's where we start to get what you're calling second wave fundamentalism, which I think is a really beautiful term for that.
Not beautiful. Yeah. It's a description because it's accurate.
Katherine: Yeah. And it's just, it's just repeating the same, the same type of thing, just in a completely different space with a different, with a different bible, with a different, this is the right thing to do. Talk a little bit about well first the role that deconstruction plays and then how that, as you said, Even if we have deconstructed and we have all the, you know, the things and we're breaking down the scriptures and this wasn't accurate and blah, blah, blah, it still lives in our bodies.
Laura: So, one of the ways that our brain and body [00:13:00] works together, we use neuroscience to explain that. So when messages come in over time, whether it's repeated messages or overwhelming messages and experience, they create what we call neuro pathways in our brain. And then those neuro pathways create chemicals.
They send them down to our bodies. And so what it starts to do is, okay, this message comes into our brain, it alerts the rest of our body. Here's the response that we have. So we go, gosh, you know, I, I knew, you know, when I was a kid, anytime that the pastor got that look in his eye or used that tone or started waving his finger I immediately started to feel guilty and convicted because, you know, I knew he was gonna tell me what a sinner I was.
And now here I am 20 years later, oh my gosh, that was such a power grab. That was such a control grab. That was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't believe any of that. I don't believe I have to be feeling guilty or convicted, but gosh, my partner or [00:14:00] my friend or whatever gets that look in their eye and all of a sudden I'm that kid sitting back in church again.
And we often get confused because I don't believe that message, but it's living in our body. And that doesn't mean it has to stay that way, but I think that's one of the pieces that Is starting now to be talked about a bit more, but when we talk about deconstruction, we're primarily talking about untangling the beliefs that we were taught, whether it's about specific issues or big general issues.
And that oftentimes is an entryway into kind of religious trauma healing and, you know, whatever your recovery path might look. But simply untangling beliefs does not necessarily untangle how those beliefs have lived and functioned in your body. I remember, I wanna say this was probably 10, 12 years ago.
I, one of the things that really was a deciding factor of leaving [00:15:00] religion was the way that LGBTQ folks were treated. And I had so many friends within that community and I just, I couldn't, I couldn't not see it. Right, right. And so, I remember one day I was on a walk with a friend of mine and there was this gay couple walking towards us, super cute holding hands, just, you know, be, you know, I don't know, maybe on a first date or something, being generally cute.
And I remember my first instinct was, Ugh. Right. And I caught myself in that moment. I was like, that's really weird because here's these, you know, this list of friends that I have. I don't cognitively believe these things. In fact, that actually drove me out of the church and yet my body just had this physiological response.
Yeah. And I recognized it in that moment because that's what my body was taught to do when I quote unquote saw sin. Here's this quote unquote sinful couple in front of me, and I'm repulsed initially [00:16:00] was repulsed by it because that's what my body had been trained to do over decades.
Yeah. So for me, I had to then tune back into that. Okay, what's happening there? Okay, there's this feeling of disgust. If I let myself kind of focus on that and notice what needs to happen next, can I kind of move that through my body and then give my body a chance to, can I get that out of me?
Release it, shake it out. Right. And be really aware that then maybe the next time I see somebody doing something that was formerly supposed to be gross or sinful or disgusting or whatever it is, I'm gonna really pay attention to what's coming up and make, orient myself to my surroundings and be like, okay, I'm not in a church anymore.
This is a lovely human in front of me. So that's just an example of how that works together. But cognitive deconstruction is wonderful. It's often very necessary. It just isn't necessarily complete, if that.
Katherine: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you, and you have, you've gotta have both. [00:17:00] they, they both need to happen.
And, and that is another, I, I would say another example of the fundamentalism remaining with us as we came from these very cerebral spaces. So then we address it with a very cerebral cognitive deconstruction, and then we just stay there. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. To feel safe in our bodies. Yes. Yeah.
I have an example for me of ways that my body still holds it. I know that these spaces set us up to see white men as the voices of trust and oh, I know that. And even though I know men are not more intelligent or more gifted or better at hearing the voice of God than women.
Yeah. I'll still catch myself. Right. Hi Grady. Even if I hate that it's happening, I'll still Yeah. Do it. And [00:18:00] I've had to just sort of, kind of reframe a little bit of just kind of exposing myself to female teachers who are teaching in a very different way because they have a different Yeah.
Ends because they came from a different space. And, and just, you know, have basically trained my body to trust someone that identifies as female. And it still happens though. It still happens.
Laura: Yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot of people, especially in social media spaces that'll be, you know, I'm unlearning this, I'm unlearning that.
And neuroscientifically, that's very inaccurate, and I don't always get caught up on terms and you know, whatever. But there are certain things. When we see them on social media and they are either unexplained, misdefined, misdiagnosed, that actually can cause a lot of confusion, sometimes even harm.
And that idea of unlearning is one of them. The [00:19:00] way our brains work, because they're plastic, right? Neuroplasticity is not that we truly unlearn. We never forget the lessons that we have learned, but we know that neurons that fire together. Well, the, the, the statement is neurons that fire together, wire together.
So what that means is that when a message is repeated, you know, in this case, so me, you know, women shouldn't teach in church. Okay? W we hear that over and over and over. Those neural pathways just start firing together so that it becomes almost this subconscious thing, right? When we're looking to change that, we.
Unlearn it so that we just never, ever think about that again. Yeah. What we look to do is create new neural pathways that are firing stronger. So the more that those new neural pathways go, it's actually okay for women to teach. Wow, this person has a lot of wisdom. Wow. I never thought about it that way.
We're looking to get some new neural pathways that are [00:20:00] firing together and as those increase the other ones, they become a bit more dormant now. They might still rear their head from time to time and that can often feel very confusing. Cause we're, God, I haven't thought about that, or I haven't believed that in such a long time.
And oh, here it's popping up again. But if we can give ourselves permission to not judge ourselves and just be curious to say, Hey, I wonder why that is, that came up, or, oh, that's interesting. Well, I'm not gonna really give that much credence, but it is really cool that this person said this.
What we're doing then is we're shifting and we're saying, yep, that was something I used to believe. I no longer believe it. The neuro pathways aren't firing together as much anymore. I'm gonna move over to this side here and you know, focus on what I do believe. I think that's an important thing to note as well.
Katherine: Yeah. And I, I feel that's, that's a helpful thing to know that if, especially if that message has been ingrained everywhere for years, not having a goal of eradicating it and just getting [00:21:00] rid of it. Yes.
Laura: It's gonna be there.
Katherine: Yeah. It's just giving yourself joy and happiness in something else.
Yeah. So that you want Yeah. To migrate towards the thing.
Laura: Exactly. That's exactly it.
Katherine: So when we experience trauma a lot of times it can lead to us feeling unsafe in our bodies. Yet part of [00:22:00] this process of leaving fundamentalism, outgrowing, fundamentalism, however we wanna say it is not just cognitive, it is embodied.
So what, what do we do and when that piece needs to happen, but then we found unsafe in our bodies.
Laura: Yeah. So there's kind of two parts I would say to answering that question while still recognizing that it's gonna look different for everybody. The first is getting in our body, and then the second part is, how do we release the fundamentalist messages?
Because one of the fundamentalist messages is that your body is untrustworthy and unsafe.
Laura: So one of the fundamentalist messages of course is your body is [00:23:00] evil. Your body is not safe, right? So we have to first kind of dip into our body before we sometimes can tackle how those messages live in our body. Because the thing is when we're talking about trauma kind of, a definition sometimes that I'll give is trauma is anything that's too much, too fast, too soon that overwhelms our ability to cope and come back to a, a baseline or a place of safety.
Now too much, too fast, too soon does not have to necessarily be what we might consider negative. Yeah. It can be too much of a good thing as well. So if we're gonna cannonball into embodiment, and we've never had any experience in our body before that can feel too much. So I'm a big proponent of going at the pace of your own nervous system, which is usually slower.
And so when we're looking at some of the embodiment things, we're looking for little, tiny, subtle things that we can do. To start to at least build some curiosity and hopefulness that our body could be a [00:24:00] safe place to be. And it could be really anything from, I'm gonna pay attention to some cues that my body would already naturally give me.
It might be hunger or satiation cues. It might be that I need to use the restroom. It might be that I'm tired. It might be that I need to move my body or stop moving my body. So I, you know, can I use some little tiny cues that maybe I'm already familiar with as a way to help me get into my body? And we build on it from there.
When we look at then the piece of how do we get rid of these messages that live inside our body, that's gonna come a, from recognizing that our body is a safe enough place to be, and being able to access that, but then noticing, okay, when x, y, z message comes across, you know, my, my prefrontal cortex, what happens in my body?
Right. So maybe, and, and maybe it's not even a message, maybe it's a tone of voice. Maybe it's a look, maybe it's a song that you hear on the radio station, whatever it might be. [00:25:00] And I notice all of a sudden, oh my gosh, my heart is beating really fast, my face is turning red. I feel like I wanna get out of here.
Okay. That's actually giving us some cues then that we're not feeling safe in this situation. Which probably is how we felt back then, whenever back then was, but we didn't have access to our bodies or being able to get out of it. So that's where we might start to look at, okay, what would my body want to do?
Oh, I just, I wanna, I wanna yell, I wanna run, I wanna bury my face in a pillow and scream and cry. Okay? Could we start with our body, some opportunities to do that, what we might call completing the trauma response cycle. So that our body's not holding that energy in there that has been previously stuck. Is that making, I know it's a, yeah, it's a complex process, but it, you know, trying to explain it a little bit more simply.
Katherine: Yeah. So maybe not attempting to address the fundamentals in our bodies first. First [00:26:00] start with just getting comfortable in your body. That's great. What are some forms of fundamentalism that we may not be aware that we're carrying with us, and how can we continue the helium process
Laura: Yeah. That's such a good question because, you know, when we start to see it, we see it everywhere, right?
Or we see the potential for it everywhere. So we said at the beginning, we might see this in a variety of areas in our life, whether it is you know, to be a true fan of this particular or true team, fan of this particular sport or team or whatever it is. Here's what you do. Say, where here, if you're gonna be a vegan, if you're gonna be a yogi, if you are going to be in this wellness, if you're going to be a Republican or conservative or democrat or liberal, here's your prescription, right?
Here's what we believe, here's what we say, here's what we think. And as long as you stay inside these [00:27:00] parameters, you're good. Yeah. Now, if you sway outside of those parameters, we might need to have a conversation, right? So we might start to notice that, and that's more of a kind of general level, individually sometimes, you know, if we can allow ourselves curiosity, especially curiosity without judgment.
So maybe you wanna call this mindfulness, whatever it is, notice. Where it is in you. When somebody does something or says something or you experience something and you go, well, that's not how it's supposed to be. It's this, it's that. If we can get curious about that, hey, what is that for me?
Why is it that I might need this person to do or say, or act exactly as I would want them to? And that's not to say that we can't have preferences or that we shouldn't compromise in a sort of relationship with other people so that we're both getting needs met. But I'm talking, you know, when I am, you know, having conversations with people just [00:28:00] randomly, you know, in a bar or something and they say, you know, this is how I think, or believer, whatever they're talking about.
Ew. Right? That's usually a spot for us to go. Am I carrying that sense of fundamentalism inside me? Am I. Consciously or subconsciously kind of promoting this idea that there are right ways to think or relate or act that I am now putting on you, you should be doing that too. And maybe even labeling that person as unsafe or harmful or dangerous, or not somebody I'd wanna be in a relationship with, simply because they are holding a different set of beliefs about something.
Right? Huh? I think it's, in fundamentalist systems, we view difference as dangerous. And so that is something that we often carry with us. So starting to notice where is that popping up on an individual level? Where do I find [00:29:00] people wholly or partially dangerous because they hold different beliefs or ways of doing life?
And does that. Are they actually dangerous or is that my own need for them to make them safe?
Katherine: Yeah. And asking that question, you said, curiosity. And then just the compassion too, because we were also told in these spaces, your emotions don't matter. Yeah. And so if we're having a reaction, it would be very easy.
And I've done this, I still do this, your dumb emotions, just shove it down and just pretend it's not happening cuz it's, I'm supposed to feel safe here. This is a safe place. And so it is. Kind of counteracting that fundamentalism to just listen.
Laura: Well, what's the opposite of fundamentalism? It's a curiosity. Maybe it's uncertainty. [00:30:00] It's an allowance for other people to show up as who they are as well as for me to do that too. Now that doesn't need any consequences for how you show up, right?
Katherine: There's no making decisions. It doesn't mean, yeah. Don't pursue things.
Laura: It's exactly, but it's just, it's giving people freedom to live and think and whatever, and, and not having to control that, right. For other people. You know, there's so many people that I'm like, God, if you would just do this, this and this, I think your life could be so much better.
And I have to step back and say, I want that for them. I can really appreciate my desire for genuine goodness for them. And I can say, not my circus, not my monkeys. That's not my role in their life. They've not asked me for advice. They have not asked me for insight. I have to just let them figure it out.
And I also can really, deeply [00:31:00] wish the best for them.
Katherine: Yeah, I think the title for this episode will be, not My Circus, not my, I love it. Love it. Away. Federalism. I thought of another one as you were talking. I'm in a, I'm in a group of women that are, it's, it's a, it's a deconstruction group, but everyone comes from different places.
And some people are in the church, some people are not in the church. Some people identify as Christian, some people don't. We have all kinds of conversations about all kinds of things, and one person made a comment the other night about a therapist being the new pastor. And it was kind of said as this positive thing, but I had a reaction to that because we don't wanna put therapists in that place either.
And I can say that, I mean, I know that's gonna set off alarms for people, but I'm a mental health professional. You're a mental health professional. We don't want people to put us on a pedestal. [00:32:00] Therapists who might be setting themselves up as the expert.
They're doing that same thing. And or to say, how dare you listen to so-and-so cuz they're not a licensed mental health professional. Or, you know, that doing that same gatekeeping, why are they a licensed mental health professional? Are they a licensed therapist?
Laura: Yeah. I will very much echo the sentiment that I as a therapist, as a coach have zero, even less than zero desire to be your guru, to be your guide, your pastor. So I feel deeply, I have a lot of gratitude for being able to support people.
I feel my role is sacred. For people to trust me with their stories, takes a brave person because sometimes they don't even [00:33:00] know me. When you start therapy. But I don't want to tell you what to do. I don't want you to look for me, I don't want you to wear a bracelet that says WWJD.
What would Laura do? I know with my practitioners, at the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, that's something that we talk about regularly, both as a kind of a practitioner care thing of really wanting to make sure that we're not creating dependency, but that we're modeling healthy relationships.
But there are so many clients that we see, especially at first, that really struggle when we're turning it back to them to go, okay, what is that for you? How would you wanna act? It's very hard coming out of fundamentalism to think on your own, to make decisions. It can be downright paralyzing.
Right? I had a moment the other day and I told one of my best girlfriends this, I get why church can be so appealing. I was having a day [00:34:00] where I was gonna have to make some significant decisions. I want somebody else to make these decisions for me. I want somebody else to just hand me the script that says, here is what you do and, and then I'll do it.
And I know I don't actually want that. Yeah. But there is something of an appeal to that. And so I think especially when you're coming out of those systems, it does feel like, oh, you're just gonna tell me what to do. Okay. Oh, I can just look to you to be the guide. I can look to you to show me what books I should read and how am I supposed to feel about this.
It is really nice and, and given all that we've come out of, it makes a lot of sense. But I would be very cautious of anybody in mental health spaces or coaching spaces or help healing support spaces where, follow me, I have all the keys to living.
Katherine: Right.
Laura: That can be dangerous.
Katherine: Yeah. And I feel it, it is a, I mean, again, this is not a, [00:35:00] this is not the sign that they're doing it. Right. But a sign that they are, or not wanting that for themselves is elevating other people and elevating voices and sharing, you know, yeah, this person's good for this, this person, you know, we're, we're all in this together. We're all doing this together.
Laura: And I do wanna say it, for the people who go, my therapist is my pastor or my guru, or I have my WWJD bracelet or whatever. I want to affirm that that is perfectly normal, especially as we're getting out of this because we are floundering.
We don't know where to go next? Is, is there shaky or stable ground beneath me? And so so if you find a sense of comfort and safety in the relationship you have with your therapist or coach or mental health professional, whomever it is, and they can provide you with that sense of support and still keep pointing you back to yourself I think that is [00:36:00] incredible.
Because the hope would be that at some point you would be able to say, oh gosh, I'm, I'm, that therapist is kind of shifting into a different role in my life. Yeah. They're still there for support, but I don't, I don't need them the same way that I used to because I've learned to trust myself. I've learned to develop my sense of intuition, my own wisdom.
I can learn from other people. I can take what my therapist says, I can figure out what works for me. And so I think I just wanna affirm that if you're at that point where you're like, my therapist is the person keeping me alive right now. Yeah, absolutely. And a good supporter, a good practitioner, a good therapist is going to be able to hold that space and also, Give you ample opportunities for you to show up in that session and for you to be the determiner of your path rather than a dependence on them.
Katherine: And just because that is [00:37:00] the space that you find yourself in, in this very uncertain, ambiguous season, doesn't mean that that's, it's gonna be that way the whole time.
Laura: Oh, absolutely.
Katherine: Yeah. It might be for a little while. So, yeah. So if you are hearing this and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm dependent on my therapist, it doesn't mean you're gonna be there that whole time. No, not at all. Not a bad person.
Laura: Whoa. Yeah, we're very normal.
Katherine: Alright. I would love to hear about your book coming out. Tell me.
Laura: So the book is called When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High Control Religion. I'm excited about it.
I took a lot of research from my own doctoral dissertation and looked at the themes of healing. Technically what that means is the book is less focused on, here's all the things wrong with religion, or, you know, what, it's, it's not that at all. It's going, here's, [00:38:00] here's some of the ways that religion can be harmful, can result in trauma.
Here's what trauma is, here's what the nervous system is. Here's kind of what healing is, a kind of a different way of looking at healing in terms of this ongoing process that happens in the little tiny moments of. And then as we notice or as we start this process of healing, living in a healing body, not a healed body, a healing body, here's some different things that we might start to notice are impacted positively.
So I think there's nine themes and I take each one I'll take apart. So we'll use embodiment. And so we look at what is the impact of a high control religion on the body on embodiment and what does it look like to live in a healing body in this specific area. I do give some practices.
I kind of crowdsourced for some answers, you know, on social media platforms, I'm able to use my own [00:39:00] story, client anecdotes, you know, all sorts of different things to hopefully make the book accessible. While the theme is evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, it's not focusing on necessarily the specific teachings of fundamentalism or Calvinism or anything like that.
So it is very applicable to many different people regardless of the religion that you're coming out of, whether a cult or high control group or family church or, you know, wherever you might be coming out of. I wanted to make it general enough so that it wouldn't necessarily matter what quote unquote religion you came from. It could still be helpful.
Katherine: Wow. Why did you, what, when did you wanna write it? Why did you decide? You know, book avenue as opposed to all the many things you're doing.
Laura: I've always wanted to write books. Since I was little and writing, journaling has been the thing [00:40:00] that has been, I call it my spiritual practice.
It's the only one that I've maintained throughout the entirety of my life of just journaling. And that's been my safety, right? Where I'm able to show up and be real. So the writing piece has always been something that's been just really central and grounding for me. I actually wasn't planning on writing this book, if I'm being perfectly honest.
My literary agent is wonderful, and she actually approached me and I was like yeah, I wanna write a book. I just didn't know how to do it. And so we kind of threw around a few different ideas. I actually had written a book and it was my own story of how high control religion really kind of groomed me for a domestically violent relationship and getting out of that and religion and healing.
And she told me, she goes, this is great. I think we should publish it someday. I think the book that you need to write is this over here, using your doctoral research. And this is somebody who I [00:41:00] deeply trust. She knows the book world and she's like, this resource doesn't exist. People are hungry for something, not a guide telling them what to do, but just knowing that there's something that they can tangibly hold and say, I'm not alone.
This thing is real. What I'm experiencing is real, there is life outside of it. But let's talk about what's impacted and what healing looks like. And so I trusted her, and came up with the proposal for this book. I'm very glad that this was the book to be written because there's some wonderful books that are coming out that are people's stories, which I think are so wonderful.
But there really hasn't been a lot in terms of resources under not what trauma truly is, what the nervous system is, how religion can impact the nervous system neuroscience. And so I wanted to be comprehensive a little, [00:42:00] a little bit like the body keeps the score, but for religious trauma.
Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. That sounds amazing. I'm very, very excited to read it when it does come out. And it's October, right? Yep.
Laura: So it'll be out October 17th, 2023, but it is available for presale. So it can be purchased, you can go to my website. There's a little book tab and it has information about the book as well as links to all the different places that you can purchase it.
But you can go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstores, which I highly encourage, or you can buy it directly from the publisher. There's a link on my website and it's half price.
Katherine: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into that. I have a nice little indie bookstore that I love here.
Laura:. Oh, I love that. Yes. I always encourage people, please support your local bookshops because we need to. Right. And there's also on my website, I have a link to bookshop.org, so if you purchase books off of there, Then it also goes to your local bookshop, which is really, really [00:43:00] nice. But yeah, it's available for pre-order.
I believe it will be coming out in audiobook as well. I won't have the final details of that until late summer. But we're getting that set up. Cause I know that's a great way for some people to read it.
Katherine: Well, I'm really excited about it. Congratulations. Final question. That is just a fun question. I'm asking on the podcast to everybody a book, a movie, a TV show, a song, some form of art, any type that is meaningful to you right now?
Laura: Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna grab the book cause I always forget the title. One second.
But it totally applies. So this is the book that I've been reading. And it's called The Creative Act, A Way of Being by Rick Ruben. And he's a music producer. And it's all about creativity, but not in our traditional sense of what we think about. I'm an artist, I'm gonna create a painting, I'm gonna create a song.
He's talking about how creativity is really the essence and he is [00:44:00] not prescriptive at all, but really tuning. It's so funny, I was telling my friend this morning, if I read this book 15 years ago, when he talks about source capitals I would've attributed it to God and Holy Spirit, right? Oh yeah.
I looked to God for, you know, how to determine this or that. And now I read it as the nervous system, individual and also collective nervous system. And I was like, yeah, that does color how I perceive things, colors, how the world perceives things. And yet when I can let that go, there's so much beauty that, you know, kind of bubbles up.
So a smile looks like that. The chapters are super short, so it's almost like I'm reading it as a devotional every morning. That part is a little ugh, but I like it.
Katherine: That's perfect. That's perfect. I love that so much. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for the shout out to it.
Cause I love books like that. Is there anything else that you wanna say as we wind down, wrap up?
Laura: [00:45:00] I really love the term second wave fundamentalism. I think we need to make it a thing.
Katherine: I’m not plagiarizing it from someone, am I?
Laura: I've never heard it before, so I'm not sure, but I think it's such a powerful discussion to have.
I don't know how many years wise you've been in this space, the deconstruction space, online and stuff. I guess I've probably been in it for four years and so you can see kind of this ebb and flow and, as certain people kind of rise to positions of prominence and fall and you know, all these things or whatever.
Katherine: And it's very, it's just funny cause I'm like, it's not funny, but it's also just the same thing.
Laura: It's a very interesting thing to observe because I tried to not get involved in any of it. I just kind of sit back and, you know, eat my popcorn as I'm watching things explode.
But I think that you know, one of the things that we easily [00:46:00] forget, and this is just very human, is that you and I may have been in this space for years at this point, and there's many other people that have been as well. But there's also many people that have been in this space for one day, or one week or one year, right?
Who just are at the very beginning of this process of untangling and walking away from this and trying to figure out what the hell just happened. And so I think that It's so good that we're having these conversations and understanding, for lack of a better term, where we messed up at the beginning of this mass exodus out of evangelicalism, you know, within the last 5, 6, 7 years.
So that it doesn't repeat itself again because the person who's been out for one day or one week or one month I don't want them to be terrified the way that I had many clients terrified too and three years ago of going, oh my gosh, what is this? So I love that we're having these conversations and recognizing what we're calling [00:47:00] second wave fundamentalism so that we stop the madness that we recognize what's happening and don't do further harm to already traumatize people.
Katherine: Yeah, and I guess, that just really just starts with awareness. And engaging in the conversation. And that's just where it starts. There's not a right answer. And we are going to fix this and we're gonna do these things and we're gonna stop it.
Yeah. It's what I want. It's what I know, but, but just, yeah, being willing to engage in the conversation is a good starting point. So I appreciate that. This was actually really relaxing for me to just talk about this thing.
Laura: I know, I know. It's so interesting because, as I said, I've been around this space for a while.
You've been around this space for a while, and it's not that I don't take a stand on anything. I just am very selective with what I post [00:48:00] on social media because I understand, I have a position of influence and my job is not to get you to think things of me. I also wanna make sure that people know I don't think this is okay, or I don't think, you know, and. I've gotten a lot of pushback from certain people that they're like, you are not a safe person because you won't take a side on X, Y, Z issues. Yes. And I'm just like, if you look at my entire history, when have I ever done it? If I have a problem with somebody, I will go to them directly.
I don't call people out. I do not publicly punish. I will go to you directly, I will share with you, hey, not sure what's going on here. We will talk about it. I will never tell other people that I did that cuz that's just not important. And I don't do the online kaboom.
And it's so interesting to watch. I also don't have trolls on my page. [00:49:00] I also don't have people fighting in the comments sections. I also don't have cancellation campaigns against me. And it's not because I'm just people pleasing, you know, whatever. But it's that people see the drama and the bigness and on the one hand, it matches their activation already, but you just can't stay there forever.
And so then you have to find people where you go, oh, okay, I can breathe a little bit. And inevitably all of those people that cause that major activation, kind of fade away, disappear. The unfortunate part is that they had set themselves up as the gurus of, you know, the deconstruction or evangelical land.
And then people are like, now what do I do? Right? In some ways, maybe it couldn't have been avoided. You're creating a new society, but [00:50:00] we're not there anymore.
Katherine: Not apocalyptic. Yeah. Who's gonna lead us, who's gonna lead us the zombies?
I don't know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I just feel the motto that has been coming to me since some of these things have occurred in the past couple months as the, the tortoise and the hair, the tortoise being slow and steady, steady and slow. That's the way we always go. That’s just repeating in my head.
Laura: It's true. I know I got this out of religion, but it's that idea of you could be a mile wide and an inch deep or really create a sense of depth and be known for somebody who's advocating for survivors and isn't going to just, you know, intentionally activate people.
We're gonna stand for what we're gonna stand for, but we're not gonna [00:51:00] demand that you think the same as I do. Exactly. You know what I mean? And I think it's important that the people that are doing that slow, steady work, keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a place for that too.
And I think that'll pay off. It'll grow the depth of your community.
Katherine: I'm really grateful for you. Really grateful for all the work you're doing.
Laura: Thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation, and I'm sure we'll talk soon.