Emancipate Your Mind

If you’ve ever felt like you’re at war with yourself as you go after the things you want and need in life, it’s probably because there are childhood parts of you that aren’t used to having their wants and needs heard, validated, and met. Giving yourself what you want and need as an adult can feel scary to those parts and they can react in big emotional ways. In this episode...

“I still feel like I’m not allowed to want anything. The voice in my head says I’m selfish, ridiculous, or dramatic whenever I try to access my needs.” “I feel like I’m at war with myself.” “Sometimes I think it was easier to convince myself I didn’t have any wants or needs because then I wasn’t disappointed when they weren’t met.&#...

Transcript This year on the podcast, we’ll be talking about how to “fill the void” after deconstruction. But in order to do that in a healthy way that helps you operate as your own authority, recognize red flags, set boundaries, and avoid high demand relationships and groups, we have to spend some time building our relationship with ourselves. In today’s episode, we work wi...

Transcript Are you tired of trying to change thought and behavior patterns year after year only to end up ditching your resolutions and feeling even worse about it all by the first week in February? This isn’t happening because you’re weak, broken, or malfunctioning in some way. In fact, you’re operating exactly the way we’d expect you to operate after you’ve experien...

Transcript In this Part 2 episode with Licensed Professional Counselor, Kevin Hales, we explore some of the first steps towards healing fragile masculinity. Kevin shares ideas about what men themselves can do to become aware of and heal subconscious programming about what it means to be a man. He also talks about how those of us in relationship with men who may feel insecure about others stepping...

Transcript Patriarchal systems don’t just attempt to put women in their place, but also men. The system constructs a “box” that men must stay in to be considered “real men”. In this episode, my husband and Licensed Professional Counselor, Kevin Hales and I explore how limiting our ability to express ourselves as humans into stereotypical boxes of what it means to be a...

Transcript Have you ever wanted to speak up and either found it difficult to open your mouth or felt horrible afterwards? Have your found yourself downplaying your authority or your experience to make others more comfortable? Does it feel like even when you do speak up, no one really hears you? In this episode, life coach and public speaking maven, Terina Maldonado, talks about how we take back ou...

Do you ever find yourself wanting to speak up, to change something about your life for the better, but find the words getting stuck in your throat? Do you ever notice yourself ignoring parts of yourself to make other people comfortable in an attempt to preserve a relationship? This episode focuses on some of the reasons we may have learned to silence our voice and some questions we can ask ourselv...

Transcript In this episode, Reiki master, podcaster and co-star of the recent Hulu documentary “Mormon No More”, Lena Osborne, talks about the importance of listening to the wisdom of your body that comes through emotions and physical sensations and how building a relationship with that feminine wisdom already inside of us can help us shed messages from patriarchy that aren’t ser...

There is a prevalent myth, particularly in high demand religion, that there exists such a thing as an “ideal woman”. In Christianity, she is described in Proverbs 31. But this idea that there is a feminine “ideal” that women should strive for exists in religion from Islam to Hinduism. You’ve likely encountered this idea out in the secular world too. This ideal says th...

Continuing the conversation from last week about Yahweh’s connection to a mother goddess, Asherah, we progress into how she was discredited and divorced in Genesis. We also talk about the cultural and societal context that may have prompted this divorce, codifying the patriarchy into religious text that was considered direct and irrefutable truth from God for the next 2600 years. ___________...

Gerda Lerner, in her book, “The Creation of Patriarchy”, says that “patriarchy is a historical construct; it has a beginning, it will have an end.” if you grew up in Christianity, it may seem like fact that the heavens and Earth were created by a lone male god who created an order in which men rule over women because women first ate the fruit of a tree that would give them...

Christianity and Patriarchy have a long history together, starting with the creation mythology in the first chapter of Genesis. While the scriptural text itself, whether you read it in the original Hebrew or any other translation, has some obvious though brief patriarchal references, it’s been the 2000+ years of male, mostly European, commentary on the creation story that has cemented the de...

In part 2 of our discussion on interdependency, Kevin and I talk about the ground rules needed to create safe space for both parties to feel seen, heard, and validated in a healthy relationship. Kevin talks particularly about how curiosity and the desire to understand matter more than the actual words we say. When we come to the table with the understanding that “all emotion makes sense&#822...

Many times, those of us who are healing from relationships of codependence sometimes slingshot to the other side of the dependence spectrum into extreme independence. However, as Kevin mentions in this first part of our discussion, either extreme can be dangerous or hurtful to our sense of well being. In this first part of our discussion, Kevin and I talk about what interdependence is and how it b...

Do you have someone in your life that you love dearly that tends to drive you crazy with their lack of self awareness and emotional intelligence, their inability to empathize, or their inability to resolve or even approach conflict? You’re likely dealing with an emotionally immature person. In this episode, we explore why many of us who come from high demand religion struggle with emotional maturi...

This month has been a dumpster fire in the LDS and ex-LDS communities as we’ve watched the LDS church respond to allegations that they’ve been covering up child sexual abuse. Since the Associated Press investigation broke, my Licensed Professional Therapist husband and I haven’t been able to stop reading and researching and discussing what we’ve found. Watching the church r...

The final type of narcissism that you’re most likely to run into in high demand religion is the vulnerable narcissist. This type of narcissist will often seem like the perpetual victim of life circumstances. They’ve had a rough life and they need YOU to save them. Their narcissistic supply is the pity and sympathy of others. They want you to take away the burdens of adult life for them...

High demand religions often teach us to deny ourselves and spent our lives in the service of others. While service because we’re passionate about a cause and care about making the world a better place can be a beautiful part of expressing our humanity, when coupled with the idea that we’re not allowed to have our own needs and desires it can become something maladaptive. One of the mal...

If you were raised in a high demand religion that prized unquestioning obedience even if it harmed you or someone you cared about, believed that your faith was “the one truth”, and that taught you that your purpose was to convince or save others from the errors of their ways, you were likely groomed to embrace many self-righteous narcissistic traits. You were likely also surrounded by...

Before we embark on a series exploring covert narcissism in high demand religion, I think it’s important we address one of our collective biggest fears: Are we all just a bunch of narcissists? In today’s episode, we discuss how you can recognize the basic traits that all clinical narcissists have and questions you can ask yourself to give yourself peace of mind. We’ll also talk a...

In this last installment of our 4 part discussion we explore one final possibility for why it can be so hard for us to rest and relax guilt and anxiety free: we’re trying to avoid our difficult emotions. In order to rest and recover, we have to put away our work and embrace the quiet. Many of us are deeply uncomfortable with the silence because when life is still our own thoughts and emotion...

This week we dig further into why so many of us continue to work even when our bodies and minds are begging with us to rest. One possible reason may be a pattern called “Insecure Overachievement”. Insecure overachievement is a behavior pattern we use to get validation, approval, and to fill self-worth wounds. Because our self-worth wounds persist, no matter how much we achieve, this cy...

Over the past couple of years, we’ve collectively taken several hits to our nervous system. When that happens, sometimes we get stuck in a pattern of “fight or flight”, constantly on alert for the next threat. In this episode, we talk about how the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems operate and complement one another during stressful events in our lives and some exer...

Have you ever felt guilt or anxiety when you try to rest, relax, or go on vacation? Do you sometimes feel driven to be productive, even when you’re exhausted mentally or physically? In this series we’ll explore some of the common reasons individuals find themselves unable to be fully present when resting. In this episode, we explore the unique American culture of internalized capitalis...