Emancipate Your Mind

Transcript As humans, we are wired for connection. Without a sense of connection we begin to wither both emotionally and physically.  When we go through deconstruction, we often feel lonely because we don’t feel fully seen, accepted, and understood by the friends and family we once felt close to. In this episode, we explore the differences between fitting in and belonging and how we can...

Transcript I think now, more than ever, we as a people understand the feeling of overwhelm. Over the past 2 years, we’ve dealt with all kinds of stressors: A world-wide pandemic. A faith transition. Political unrest. Climate change induced disasters. It feels like a lot because it is! If you’ve been feeling tired, stressed out, anxious, ill, numb, irritable, or unmotivated because it f...

Have you ever had a relationship where you didn’t feel entirely safe to be or express your full self? Have you ever found yourself walking around on eggshells around a friend or family member? Avoiding specific topics of conversation or stuffing difficulties in the relationship? Do you find yourself arguing with those you love?  We ALL have relationships like this.  Often, we want...

 If you’re afraid of what will happen if you let yourself feel anger, you’re not alone. Most of the examples of experiencing anger we witness are unhealthy examples. We learned to become aggressive, passive aggressive, or suppressive with our anger from watching those around us and responding to what was rewarded and what was punished in our households as a child. We developed our...

Who was taught that anger was evil? That it could destroy lives? That it was poison? Yeah. Me too. In this episode, we explore how this emotion serves us and helps us make healthy changes in our lives. We use our anger to get out of soul-sucking work situations to abusive relationships. We also use our anger for social justice and societal change. Come along with me as we explore the 5 attributes...

Many of us were conditioned to believe that religion was the only way to raise ethical, empathic, and responsible children. If you are anything like me, you may have spent weeks worrying about how you were going to raise children with a strong moral compass after leaving high demand religion. Rachel from Post Mormon Parenting really helped me answer this question with her insightful YouTube videos...

Many people who have experienced religious trauma have struggled to understand the reasons they had elevated or even ecstatic feelings while attending a church that was also mentally and emotionally harming their sense of well being. Most were even told that those elevated emotions were evidence that the religious teachings were “true” and that any other feelings of disagreement, hurt,...

While studying about intuition, I began realizing that the way people describe the power of intuition sounded incredibly similar to how they described the gift of the holy ghost or being overpowered by the spirit. As I got curious with my findings and asked questions in the Facebook group (the link is below), I realized that several people had struggled to tap into their intuition both while relig...

One of the biggest sources of confusion after leaving high demand religion is trying to discern whether the gut reactions you’re having stem from your inner knowing or from your indoctrination. In this episode, we explore ways to tap into your bodily sensations and your emotional experience to tell whether you’re feeling intuition or a fear or shame response induced by childhood trauma...

All of the most innovative and successful people report that intuition is a big part of their success. Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs…even Paul McCartney. It’s no wonder that we’d want to know more about how this process works. This is why in recent years, with the improvements in brain imaging and the expansion of our understanding of neurology, sc...

Have you ever experienced that feeling of frustration or dissonance when you’re living out of alignment with your core personal values? Are you aware of what your core personal values are? Have you ever given them language? In your religious life, did you find that one of the things you enjoyed was having language for what you valued and believed? Do you feel a little lost or uncertain now t...

I had never heard the term “cognitive dissonance” before going through religious transition, but once I learned what it was it really helped me understand my experience in the church and my difficulty changing behaviors after leaving. It also helps me have more understanding and even compassion for those who discount my personal experience with religious trauma syndrome and my extensiv...

This episode was inspired by a debate I had with a childhood friend over the word “indoctrination” a few months ago. She believes that we can’t teach children morals or how to live happy, successful lives without indoctrinating them. That didn’t feel right to me. So, in true nerd fashion, I researched it. This episode is basically what I found from a wide array of sources,...

This week we’re digging into undue influence or mind control. Why? Because one of the bigger concerns I hear from people who have left high demand religion is the fear that they’ll fall prey to deception, misinformation, or undue influence again. So many of us can’t understand why we couldn’t see the coercion clearly and actually believed we were operating from 100% free wi...

I hear this exclamation more times than I can count in my line of work.  And while there’s something that makes us shy away from looking at whether we may have been victim to authoritarian control, there’s also something liberating about understanding why we made some of the decisions we did. This podcast looks at  Steve Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control &nbs...

Have you ever wondered why you went along with certain things while you were active in your religion? Have you ever experienced something traumatic at church and felt like it was your own fault because you willingly participated? Do you find yourself holding yourself to religious promises you made when you were younger or feeling guilty for breaking those promises? This episode will peel back the...

I should have known when creating a podcast on intention vs. impact that I’d also get a chance to work on making sure my intentions and impact were in alignment. I’m still learning just like all of you.  In this, take 3, of this episode, we discuss why it’s not just our intentions that matter when it comes to creating safe spaces for those around us, but it’s how peopl...

Grief has been on my mind this week as I prepare to attend my 17-year-old nephew’s funeral in Utah. In this episode, I dive into the complicated emotional roller coaster that is grief.  I hope to normalize the common experiences we all have when moving through loss and hopefully provide some language and understanding for the experience to make it easier to process.  ______________...

Today we’re diving into the practice of somatic experiencing as a way to help locate and release trauma in the body.  MindBody Mentor, Shawna Kathleen, talks about her own experience with autoimmune disease, relationship abuse, and sexual trauma and how learning to use somatic feedback from her body allowed her to begin alchemizing the pent up trauma from her past and turning it into so...

Everyone numbs emotionally from time to time when we’re overwhelmed and we’re not sure how to process what we’re experiencing. Any substance or behavior can be used as a numbing mechanism if we do it to avoid feeling difficult emotions or to avoid exploring difficult thoughts. While the we gain the benefit of escape for a short time, there are also consequences when we numb. We k...

Over the past decade, so much research has emerged showing that mindfulness, or the practice of being completely focused on the present, is not just helpful for calming our nervous systems, helping us focus, and helping us feel more satisfied with our lives, but can also help people who are healing from trauma. When we’re able to focus on the present, instead of ruminating over the past or l...

There’s no doubt that those who are able to look at life’s challenges with hope and optimism enjoy a lot of proven benefits. They have less stress, better health, and live longer. They also are able to bounce back from life’s challenges with more resilience. However, sometimes our quest for positivity can actually be harmful. When it encourages us to stuff our difficult emotions...

When we share our stories with those who have earned the right to hear them, we not only help ourselves become more shame resilient, we make safer spaces for others to share their own stories. When people are shame resilient, they are better able to be authentic, to have compassion for themselves and others, to learn from their mistakes, and to be accountable for the harm they may have accidentall...

Sometimes one of the most helpful tools for healing is understanding what is going on. When we know that the grief, anger, confusion, fear, loneliness, and sense of feeling displaced are all common when you’re experiencing religious trauma, it can make it easier to be patient with ourselves throughout the experience. You may also experience nightmares, dissociation, flashbacks, or other symp...

Have you ever just lost it for no reason and caught yourself thinking, “What in the world is going on with me?” Have you ever found yourself having a full body panic attack out of the blue? Have you ever found yourself inexplicably avoiding people you used to love hanging with, but now feel unsafe or threatening? You may be experiencing trauma triggers. In this episode, we talk about w...