Religious trauma | Jen Payne

Religious and Spiritual Trauma

What’s in these short writings is not comprehensive regarding the extensive harm religion enacts on us. I’m positive there are so many books and courses and practitioners specializing on this subject. The harm is rampant among us.

I’m here because I’m an intuitive teaching intuitive process and method, and religion really fucks with intuition. It’s an ugly thing rearing its head when we dare to believe we could have a gorgeous full connection with this aspect of us.

So I’m stepping into this topic with intuition on my mind. I’ll offer some of how I understand what happened to us, and what we need to restore connection with our intuitive selves.

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As us ex-religious people are aware, religion is an indoctrination. Being told how it is. Arranging belonging and safety around agreement about this version of how it is. Often without even quite knowing it happened, there we are. Indoctrinated.

Indoctrination happens, well, probably everywhere humans live. I’m not an expert who can definitively speak to the everywhere. In the United States of America where I’ve lived all 50 years of my life, indoctrination happens in such a layered way that it’s hard to identify how many layers there are exactly or how to zoom out far enough to sort of encapsulate the whole damn thing. Let’s just leave it at, it’s EXTENSIVE.

My focus here is religion, I’m just noting that indoctrination is deeply layered with many indoctrinations all winding themselves in with each other. Not to make us feel hopeless or overwhelmed. More to give a nod of recognition to the complexity and to note that what we’ve done or still have yet to do to get religion out of our systems is likely a process we’re in the midst of about other things as well.

There is a process though. ;) That’s the good news. This is something that can happen, we can be liberated from indoctrination. It’s absolutely possible.

The most successful processes of indoctrination, and by that I mean resulting in the most devoted and loyal followers, tie the “how it is” with two things -

A high enough degree of real, true punishment about what will happen to us if we don’t agree, that we’re terrified and motivated by this terror to stay in line.

And a highly compelling appeal to our deep, intrinsic, and beautiful human desire to be good, do what’s right, and be part of creating the best version of the world.

We want to create beauty. And we want to be safe.

Done. Religion meticulously and intricately tells us how to do and be both.

(So does liberalism. So does conservatism. So does (white) feminism. So does capitalism. Colonialism. Etc. Layers. Complication. Interconnectedness amongst any and all.)

Unlike some of the indoctrinations I mentioned just above, religion runs a whole self approach to co-opting our autonomy. Where something like capitalism controls us somewhat more around physical survival than a comprehensive appeal to our desire for goodness, religion goes all the way. It goes all the way to the top by calling itself spiritual, telling us there’s an unseen world that functions a particular way and how we can have access to that world. And it ties both our existential and physical survival to this unseen reality, that yes, in this Western culture with capitalism and colonialism running our foundations, we insist on having individual access to, but what a joke right? The terms of this access are tightly controlled and defined, and our experiences are highly and authoritatively interpreted.

One of the haunting questions I hear from so many who’ve exited religious systems is - Was any of what I experienced inside that system real? It seemed so real.

My answer - Fuck yes it was real.

And this is the heart of it right? We had real experiences, invited in and brought to our awareness by real, true aspects of us but mixed in with so much bullshit that now - this is the tragedy and the part I am hellbent on helping you retrieve - we don’t trust real, true aspects of us. We are separated from OURSELVES by our experience of indoctrination inside this authoritative system.

#2.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, and I can promise there are more of them than you even know, there are ex-evangelicals everywhere. Also ex-catholics and ex-mormons and cult survivors and other genres of religion and spiritual systems. But evangelicalism is a big enormous religious show in town in the U.S. And we’re telling it to go fuck itself in droves.

Evangelicalism brings that extra twist of being very very involved in the political and economic systems of the United States, so it can have that extra amount of reach into how we’re oriented to fuckin everything. Evangelicalism really really loves money and power.

This is one of the reasons why all those droves are telling it to go fuck itself. It deeply lacks integrity.

The stories of how we got out vary widely. What made it fall apart for you? It’s no one thing in common with everyone except for this - the anguish of coming into full clarity of how done we had to be with religion, and the deepening heart-wrenching anguish (and so much loss) that followed the leaving. The ending of an entire way of being that went all the way into our bones. It is a real motherfucker to come back from. No kidding, here I am, Jen Payne, professional intuitive, writing a whole thing about it.

And how about I just say why I’m doing that one more time?

I’m over here banging a drum about intuition, saying it’s an essential part of us we need access to as systems of corrupt power fall apart around us. And whatever next step any of us is taking with our intuition, doubt can be part of it. Some doubt is normal. The kind of doubt religion creates is big, intimidating and overwhelming, even if to date we’ve done so much healing work with our religious trauma.

So here I am, with intuition in one hand and your hand in the other and I’m not gonna stop insisting that you can have big, deep connection with this source of vitality, awareness, and clarity living inside you.

You are intuitive and you GET TO BE intuitive.

For so many of us fucked over by religion, this territory of reconnection with our knowing can feel terrifying. It can be hard to believe that not only is our intuitive self real and trustworthy, it is SAFE to connect to it.

But hon, I promise, your intuition is real and it’s safe to connect to it.

Some of us exited religion, considered atheism or agnosticism for a hot second or for awhile, and then found our way to a spiritual path. Some of us found atheism or agnosticism to be the most solid, ongoing ground to stand on.

Some of you who are really in touch with your intuition AND on a spiritual path don’t like this thing I’ve been up to where I’m telling spirituality intuition doesn’t belong to it. ;)

I get it, I do. This is just really how I see it. Intuition doesn’t belong to spirituality. Intuition belongs to everyone, regardless of beliefs or ways of being. We are all intuitive. (Which is not to say that there aren’t ways of being that can get in the way of intuition. Atheism just isn’t one of them.)

If intuition takes you into experiences that it makes most sense to you to call spiritual or to engage from a frame of spiritual practice, great. Love it. Do it.

It’s just not necessary for being all-the-(your)-way intuitive.

My model for almost everything is relationship between equals. This is what I want between you and your intuition. Not someone controlling you from a place of hierarchy or authority. A connection way more like a bestie who says things like, bestie, I have something amazing I want to show you. Or honey, you are off the rails and I’d like to lead you back to, well, yourself. Or, fill in however your friends talk to you. I want to restore connection to your intuition as an intimate companion that you walk through life hand in hand with.

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Is this the only thing involved in recovery from religious trauma? No, that recovery is a multi-faceted and complicated thing because trauma recovery always is. At its foundations, trauma recovery is a restoration of connection to ourselves. Our bodies, our emotions, our sexuality, our thinking, and with religious trauma, our everything, because it wound itself all the way into our bones.

What I want to know is, where are you afraid? Where are you confused? What happens when you really try to listen to yourself? Are there some parts of you that feel safe to listen to and other parts not? How did you rearrange yourself for religion and what shape are you bouncing back to? And anything and everything that, no surprise right? ;) intuition points us too.

We can be free. Liberation is a devotional path that once we put ourselves fully on it, is unrelenting ON OUR BEHALF. And on behalf of you and your intuition, I will be too. 💙