Navigating Religious Trauma, Spiritual Abuse, and Lies About God: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
Curt and Katie interview Dr. Jamie Marich about her new book coming out in October 2024, You Lied to Me About God. We explore the impacts of religious abuse, Jamie’s personal story of spiritual trauma, and what therapists can miss when working with clients on these topics. We also dig into the idea that therapists can let their clients down when they don’t do their own internal work, address their bias, and show up effectively.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
Dr. Jamie Marich (she/they) inspires people and systems to heal the wounds that keep them stuck, allowing for authentic transformation free of shame and stigma. A TEDx speaker, clinical trauma specialist, expressive artist, lay spiritual director, short filmmaker, Reiki master, yoga teacher, and recovery advocate, she unites all of these elements in her mission to redefine therapy. She is a woman in long-term recovery from an addictive disorder and lives with dissociative identities. As a queer woman who survived multiple spiritually abusive experiences in childhood and adulthood, Jamie is passionate about helping people to recognize where religion and spirituality may be causing harm in their lives so that they can chart a course for personalized healing.
Jamie began her career as a humanitarian aid worker in Bosnia-Hercegovina from 2000-2003 teaching English and music. Jamie travels internationally teaching on topics related to trauma, EMDR therapy, expressive arts, and spiritual abuse while maintaining a private practice and online education operations in her home base of Akron, Ohio. Marich is the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness and the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness approach to expressive arts therapy. From her college days until 2012, Jamie was a high school speech and debate coach, and she still enjoys mentoring professionals in the art of public speaking. Jamie led two individual students to Ohio state titles, and she was a coach on two state championship teams (2009, 2011) with Howland High School.
Marich is the author of EMDR Made Simple: 4 Approaches for Using EMDR with Every Client (2011), Trauma and the 12 Steps: A Complete Guide for Recovery Enhancement (2012/2020), Creative Mindfulness (2013), Trauma Made Simple: Competencies in Assessment, Treatment, and Working with Survivors, Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation (2015), EMDR Therapy & Mindfulness for Trauma-Focused Care (with Stephen Dansiger, 2018), Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery (2019), Healing Addiction with EMDR Therapy: A Trauma-Focused Guide (with Stephen Dansiger, 2022), The Healing Power of Jiu-Jitsu: A Guide to Transforming Trauma and Facilitating Recovery (with Anna Pirkl, 2022), Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Life (2023), and Trauma and the 12 Steps: The Workbook (with Stephen Dansiger, 2023). Her long-time publisher, North Atlantic Books, is releasing her memoir of spiritual abuse and recovery, You Lied to Me About God, in October 2024.
In this podcast episode, we look at the impacts of spiritual trauma on therapy clients
We invited our friend, Dr. Jamie Marich, back on the podcast to talk about her story (and her upcoming book) that deals with spiritual abuse, religious trauma, and the lies that have been told “in God’s name” that lead to shame and isolation for many of our clients.
What are the impacts of spiritual abuse and religious trauma?
“One of my favorite definitions of shame, which is something I think just about every trauma survivor deals with on some level: shame is the lie that someone told you about yourself. That is from Anais Nin, the feminist author…that definition has just always so resonated in me, that shame are the things that other people put on us, that we’ve taken on as truths about ourself, but so much of healing is recognizing just how big of lies they are, and to tap into another truth. And in spiritual abuse, people tend to tell us lies about ourselves in God’s name.” – Dr. Jamie Marich
- Definition of shame as the lie someone told you about yourself
- Spiritual abuse goes deeper because the lies are told in God’s name
- There are big impacts of religious trauma on those in the LGBTQ+ community as well as those who are seeking deep spiritual connection
Looking at the concept of forgiveness within the context of religious and other trauma
“Forgiveness is is not required for healing, but a lot of people believe it is because various religions, various churches, various societal forces, have pounded that into their heads…so many institutions, especially religious institutions, will make victims feel like they’re the problem if they’re not forgiving…the forgiveness theology really does become a tool of the abuser, that if you’re not forgiving and moving on, you’re the one who’s preventing healing…you who’ve been wounded have to forgive and move on.” – Dr. Jamie Marich
- How forgiveness can be helpful
- How forgiveness is weaponized within the church and can be harmful
- Forgiveness is not required, acceptance is a more appropriate goal
How can therapists make sure they are not adding to the harm for clients with religious trauma?
- Do your own work, so you can approach clients where they are
- Be authentic, don’t lie to your clients, but don’t bring it up unless asked
- Seek consultation to enhance your understanding of the client’s situation
- Cultural humility is key, and don’t rely solely on your clients to be the cultural informant
- Do not impose your spirituality on your clients, but be open to discussing spirituality
- Be aware of the power dynamics, so you don’t become the client’s new guru
- Help clients to find their own answers rather than relying on external authority
Other ideas we touched on in this podcast episode
- The importance of critical thinking
- “Therapy cults” that promote adherence to a specific intervention model
- The challenges of folks seeking compliance and righteousness, rather than taking a nuanced approach to topics and deciding for themselves
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Dr. Jamie Marich’s websites: www.jamiemarich.com, redefinetherapy.com, www.instituteforcreativemindfulness.com
Dr. Jamie Marich’s Tiktok: Dr. Jamie Marich (@traumatherapistrants)
Netflix Documentary: Pray Away
Bad Theology Kills by Kevin Garcia
Dr. Jamie Marich’s blog post: I’m going to let you down
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Jamie’s episodes:
Dissociation in Therapy: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
The Balance Between Boundaries and Therapy: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
Exploring Trauma and the 12 Steps: An interview with Dr. Jamie Marich
Other relevant episodes:
Religious Trauma and High-Control Religion: An Interview with Anna Clark Miller, LPC, LMHC
How Can You Create an Ethical Faith-Based Practice? An Interview with Whitney Owens, LPC
Therapy as a Political Act: An Interview with Dr. Travis Heath
We Answer the Question: Is EMDR a Pyramid Scheme?
Has Therapy Become the New Religion?
Is Therapy an Opiate of the Masses?
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)
Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:16
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that we do in our practice, the things that we do in our field. And we are joined today, once again, by our very dear friend, Dr Jamie Marich, and always putting such wonderful things out into the world. And you have a new book coming out that is something that we’ll talk a lot about here. But when it comes to trauma, when it comes to a big influence on my practice and the way I go about things, I’m always just glad to share the same space with you. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Jamie Marich 0:56
Our pleasure. So glad to be here with you. Is this number five or number six? I’ve lost count. It’s been a lot.
Katie Vernoy 1:01
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Dr. Jamie Marich 1:02
That I’ve been on the show.
Katie Vernoy 1:04
But we just love having you here. But for anybody, if they’ve missed you before, let’s, let’s tell them who you are and what you’re putting out into the world.
Dr. Jamie Marich 1:13
So professionally, I’m Dr. Jamie Marich. I’m the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness. I’m an EMDR trainer. Write books in the field of EMDR, dissociation, expressive arts therapy, addiction recovery. Personally, we use the moniker Jamie plus to indicate that we are a person with lived experience of dissociative identities. We’re also in long term recovery from addiction. And yeah, we kind of exist at this space, this intersection of having had a lot of professional training and been a part a lot of the conversations around trauma, yet we are also just a human and even a lot of our parts struggle with the way the field is. And so it’s one of the reasons we really appreciate this podcast, is you have some of these tricky conversations and call things as you see them. And we really love that about y’all.
Katie Vernoy 2:05
Ah, thank you.
Curt Widhalm 2:07
So your new book, “You Lied to me about God” give us a little bit of the broad overview, and then we’ll jump into kind of the normal questions that we we have about this.
Dr. Jamie Marich 2:17
So I feel like I’m in the confessional, which is appropriate, because we grew up not just very religious. We grew up doubly religious, meaning we had one parent. Our parents were married Roman Catholic, and then when I was about five years old, our father converted to a pretty extreme evangelical group, and he harbored some pretty extreme views on things, including that Catholics were bad and were going to hell. And my parents stayed married in the same house, and they were both religious in their own way, having a lot of contempt for each other’s expressions of Christianity. And as the oldest child, as the hero child, I got caught in the middle of a lot of this. I remember my father’s conversion vividly, and I went to two churches every Sunday morning through most of my formative years up until high school. And I, on top of all of that, if I’m really looking back at it, honestly, knew from when I was about nine years old that I was queer and liked all genders and had a lot of feminist thinking, and growing up in a religious house, it very much squashed that. So there’s a lot of memoirs about growing up in conservative religion out there. Why I felt I really wanted to add my voice to that chorus of memoirs is I got it from two different brands of Christianity. And what I like to comment about that is my parents hated a lot of things about each other’s Christianity, but they were common on the things they did hate, which was LGBTQ acceptance, women and people having bodily autonomy, feminism. So it was an interesting upbringing for me. And I, in the book, discuss how as a teenager is when I first said to myself the phrase spiritual abuse, that this has to be with spiritual abuse is, not just being argued over like I was, but just so many of the lies that they told me about myself in God’s name, so many of the teachings that were imparted. And even though this is kind of the new book, and I’m talking about this more vocally, through all of my work over the last 15 years or so as a trauma educator, I’ve always been very clear to name that spiritual abuse/religious trauma are valid forms of trauma that we need to be discussing in our larger discussions about trauma.
Katie Vernoy 4:54
What do you think is the differential impact that can happen from spiritual abuse or religious trauma. Like, what are the things that are unique about that type of trauma?
Dr. Jamie Marich 5:06
So, I can answer that question by explaining the title of the book: “You lied to me about God.” So one of my favorite definitions of shame, which is something I think just about every trauma survivor deals with on some level. Shame is the lie that someone told you about yourself. That is from Anais Nin, the feminist author. And I that definition has just always so resonated in me, that shame are the things that other people put on us, that we’ve taken on as truths about ourself, but so much of healing is recognizing just how big of lies they are, and to tap into another truth. And in spiritual abuse, people tend to tell us lies about ourselves in God’s name. Queer people, trans people often get told things like, you’re an abomination, you’re unnatural, you’re a freak of nature, and God is not happy with you as a result. And that can take on different levels of of cut, different levels of burn, of rub, depending on the meaning that is ascribed to God in your house. For a lot of children, especially who grew up in religious households, remember, your parent can become like this, God like figure. So if they’re saying it and they’re saying it in God’s name, it can just take on an extra degree of pain. And for folk like me and a lot of people who identify as such, one of the reasons I think spiritual abuse was particularly injurious to me is I love spiritual connection. I love spiritual practice. Everything in me really yearns for connection to something greater than myself. And a lot of people can go through horrible religious experiences and walk away from it like, what’s the big deal? But I think for folks like us who really have that chip that or at least that part, or that sense of really wanting that deep spiritual connection, it can hurt even worse.
Curt Widhalm 7:15
You’re aware that we ask this question not from a shaming place, but…
Dr. Jamie Marich 7:20
Sure.
Curt Widhalm 7:20
…from a place of education, so people aren’t making the same mistakes. But we start a lot of our episodes with what do therapists get wrong or misunderstand when working with people who have these kinds of religious trauma experiences?
Dr. Jamie Marich 7:36
I think a lot of therapists, so there’s a couple flavors of wrong or miss, miss boat that I want to speak to. And and I think I want to reiterate what Curt said, what I’m about to give you is not a shaming place, it’s just so you can educate yourselves better. So there are some therapists who did not grow up religious at all, who can kind of drop their mouths and be like, You did what, or they told you what? And I think therapists who did grow up religious and have had some kind of healing away from toxic religion, we kind of have a shared language with some of our clients about that. Whereas a lot of therapists who consult with me on this are like, You mean this purity culture is a real thing. You were actually told to wear this purity ring that your father gave you as a symbol to wait until marriage. And think a lot of people who didn’t grow up religious have a hard time understanding what religious clients went through. So like with anything in the realm of cultural humility, you can ask your client to paint a picture, but it’s also not your client’s job to be the sole cultural informant, right? So, if a client does disclose growing up as a gay person or a queer person, a trans person in evangelical culture, maybe consider watching the Netflix documentary: Pray Away. It’s an excellent exploration of that. There is a lot of literature out there, some courses now, that can help therapists at least get the 411, on a lot of what toxic faith, toxic religion, looks like. I mean, cult documentaries are a cottage industry now, and a lot of people’s religious experiences are either cultish or border on being cultish. So, a lot of these documentaries, some are better than others, might also help you understand the insight for some folks who grew up religious. So I think that’s that’s one thing that that therapists miss. Another thing I experienced, so when I was working at a group practice. Anytime a client spoke of anything connected to spiritual abuse, religious trauma, spirituality, it’s like, Oh, we got to send them to Jamie because we don’t feel as therapists qualified to talk about spirituality at all. And I think that’s another thing therapists get that if I don’t have special training as a pastor or as a pastoral counselor, I can’t work with people around their spiritual journeys that’s not even connected to spiritual abuse. And I’ve always said, if you truly believe in counseling or therapy as a holistic endeavor, yeah, you want to know your scope, that you may not be doing spiritual direction. But we have to have an openness to look at where clients are at spiritually, what their spiritual practices mean to them, what areas of their life they’ve been wounded by spiritually. And if you’re stuck with a client who’s otherwise doing good work with you, get some consultation or do some ongoing reading and study. Now the third boat, and the one I want to speak to most fully, are for therapists who may still be very religious themselves or caught in here’s what I hear a lot; Yes, I’m religious, but I try to keep like an EMDR, we say stay out of the way. I try to stay out of the way when it comes to my clients. But if you are still driven in any way, especially by a lot of conservative religious values, you may be guiding your clients from more of a faith based place than you realize when they may want a more secular experience, or they may legitimately need to talk some shit about the church because of what they went through. And if you’re clutching your pearls about that, it can be a problem. I kid you not. So really unburdening here. So chapter nine of my memoir is called I believe in a queer God, and it opens with the story of how one of my best friends who grew up in conservative religion as a gay man who ended up taking his own life. And the chapter starts with when I found out that day. This man, his name was Jason, was actually told at one point in a secular treatment institution for his addiction, was pulled aside by a young licensed, a counselor trainee, pre licensed person you might call in some states. And this person pulled him aside and said, you know, don’t you think your struggles with addiction are because of your homosexuality and that you’re just not right with God?
Katie Vernoy 12:28
Wow.
Dr. Jamie Marich 12:31
I wish that was an outlier, especially in a state like mine. I’m from Ohio. And he spent a lot of years trying to unpack that in other therapy. And yes, this was the message that the churches he grew up in gave him, and here he was getting it from a licensed or about to be licensed person in an agency that was not faith based. That’s a problem, and that is something I really want to challenge any therapist who might be listening to this, to consider. And there’s nothing, I want to be clear. There’s nothing wrong with being religious. There’s nothing wrong with being a person of faith. We still consider ourselves to be a person of faith and a deeply spiritual individual, and we actually get the appeal of religion. We think the problem comes in when you are trying to force your beliefs about God, higher power or religion on other people, especially if you’re doing it in the name of clinical work.
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Curt Widhalm 13:29
Seems like a lot of the conversations that we have around religious trauma is first and foremost as clinicians, is dealing with your own feelings about religion and really being able to put that in ways that, like you’re saying, doesn’t just come across to the client, doesn’t push things on the client, and often even some of the ways that that develops into some of the colloquial languages that we end up using. The part of the book that I I got to read ahead of this interview, is I want you to talk about the the paradox of forgiveness, and that part of the book really stood out to me. And just, just go with, go with that.
Dr. Jamie Marich 14:15
Why thank you for the invitation. Oh, forgive and forget. You have to forgive. You have to forgive. I mean forgiveness is such a loaded word, it means a lot of things to different people. And many clients, especially for trauma work, have come in to me over the years and asked if they have to forgive their abuser, if they have to forgive the person who traumatized them. And my secular therapist answer to that question is absolutely not. You don’t have to forgive. I don’t think that is a requirement for healing. Healing looks like different things to different people. I do try to generally guide some people towards some level of acceptance. Acceptance never means you have to like it, though. Never means you have to endorse it. And yeah, so forgiveness is is not required for healing, but a lot of people believe it is because various religions, various churches, various societal forces, have pounded that into their heads. And the the problem with forgiveness, because if you can genuinely forgive someone, and it helps you in your healing process, beautiful. Many people may find this hard to believe, but I have truly forgiven my parents after everything I’ve been through and everything I’ve written about them, but the reason I’m able to forgive is because I’ve dealt with the stuff. I do have some understanding that my parents were at of place in their own journey when they did a lot of these things or didn’t do a lot of these things in God’s name. Right? What we have to realize, too, and I think this is especially important for therapists, to consider, is so many institutions, especially religious institutions, will make victims feel like they’re the problem if they’re not forgiving. That okay, let’s say I’m a victim who’s reporting sexual abuse by a pastor. You have to forgive them. That’s what Jesus would want you to do. Or so many people who’ve come reporting spousal abuse in church settings have been told: but the godly thing is to forgive them and move on. And a lot of the cult documentaries or insular religious community documentaries, high control religious documentaries highlight this. How the forgiveness theology really does become a tool of the abuser, that if you’re not forgiving and moving on, you’re the one who’s preventing healing. But it really is just on I think at our most generous, we could say it’s a sloppy band aid you’re putting on a wound, and really, at our most real, it’s just a very cruel thing. Because we tell people your pain doesn’t matter, but in the name of keeping everything together, keeping the family together, keeping the church together, you who’ve been wounded have to forgive and move on.
Katie Vernoy 17:16
It also seems to cause this element of self hatred or self doubt, at the very least around someone’s ability to be good or right, if they have had a challenge in forgiving the person who’s traumatized them. And there’s a, I’m going to use a, you know, a phrase I don’t love, but there’s a gaslighting that goes on because nobody can say, I haven’t actually forgiven this person, but I must say to in a public facing, you know, space, oh, I have forgiven, and that’s made all the difference and all of these things. And so there’s not an acknowledgement that there’s a whole bunch of people who have been, quote, unquote sinned against or traumatized, who have forgiven but haven’t really forgiven, and so the folks who internally are struggling with it feel like there’s something wrong with them. They may still have anger and believe that they are the victim, and not just that they’re preventing healing, but they also feel like, well, other people can forgive. Why can I? Why can’t I? What’s wrong with me?
Dr. Jamie Marich 18:20
Very well said. It’s a personal thing.
Katie Vernoy 18:24
Yeah.
Dr. Jamie Marich 18:24
It’s how we feel about it. And forgiveness can even mean different things to different people, because I might explore that with a client as What does forgiveness mean to you? Because I personally believe you can forgive and not want to have anything to do with that person in your life ever again. That might just be good, healthy, common sense. But in some contexts, for some people, forgiveness means you have to heal and be be who you need to be for the family. And forgiveness in certain contexts might mean, well, I take them back and I accept them, and we’re going to move on as if nothing happened. So it’s a loaded word, and I think as therapists, it’s important we don’t impose it on clients, but we do explore some folks charge or baggage around it.
Katie Vernoy 19:11
It feels like with both the concepts of shame as well as the concept of forgiveness, there granted, there’s probably much we can read and many trainings we can attend and all of those things. But it is such a personal thing that that each of us has to kind of understand almost viscerally what those things mean to us and and we have our own relationships with them. Many of us probably also have our own religious trauma, religious experiences, our own spirituality, and it feels like there’s so many opportunities as therapists to have a lot of unconscious influences when the conversations go in these directions, and in the therapy room with our clients. And there’s there’s so much internal work, I think that therapists really can do/should do, I don’t know the right word there, to help make those things relevant, so that they can understand how they’re showing up in the room. And I’ll link to like every interview we’ve done with you, because we talk about how we show up in the room, authenticity, humanity, all those things. But, but today, as you’re sitting here today, what is your, what is your thought about how clients, or how therapists can show up for their clients, given the complexity of what we’re what we’re talking about here. Because there’s our own experiences, there’s there’s a client’s experiences, there’s societal experience, like there’s just so much that goes into these conversations.
Dr. Jamie Marich 20:35
This is a fantastic question to be asking in 2024 America, when religion has been used as a weapon by one of our political parties in particular. And a lot of these issues mean a lot to our clients on wherever they may fall politically. So again, there’s therapists in a couple different boats I want to speak to. If you’re truly the kind of therapist who doesn’t feel affected by much of this with faith or religion or spirituality, you may be, and I said, maybe in the better position to be more of that open, blank slate for clients to discuss what they have to work through, what they have to. But if you also have not been a therapist who’s particularly religious or hasn’t been wounded by a lot of this, you may also not understand why this means a lot for people either direction, because a lot of clients who are more conservatively religious truly believe their beliefs are under attack, and many of us who are either religious or not believe that religious beliefs have been used to attack us. So I know this is not news when I’m saying we’re in a very polarized place right now, and these issues do show up in the therapy space, and I obviously contest anything you may have ever been taught that therapy is apolitical, because you really can’t leave religion and politics out of the therapy room if it means something to your client. So again, where life may be easy for you is if you, as the therapist, really do heavily align with your clients, both politically, maybe around spirituality and religion as well. But we don’t always have that luxury, so to speak, especially in certain parts of the country. So obviously, do your own work is part of this. And thank you, Katie, for mentioning that. I won’t say much more to that, other than in You Lied to me about God at the end of every chapter I do have exercises for people to write their own spiritual memoir or their own autobiography, and it never has to be anything you publish, but it’s just really my invitation for you to do some inventory on where you stand on a lot of these things. Because I think knowing yourself ultimately helps you be there better for your clients. Now, a question I get a lot is, what if a client, point blank asks me something like, who did you vote for? What do you believe? Do you think that Muslims are evil and the Christian nation is under attack? Because I have been asked that by a client before, right? Okay, so I believe it’s important not to lie to your clients, that transparency is is key. How I usually will handle that question in modern America, though, is to say I’m willing to answer your question, and it may change our relationship if I do. Because I know in my graduate training, I was taught, if a client brings up religion or politics, you deflect it back on them and say something like, why does this matter to you? And yeah, it’s a fundamentally good question. Why does this matter to you? However, I think we have to be more gentle about how we ask it. And what, what is the significance of who is president to the mental health struggles that we’re dealing with in this space, and if I do answer your question transparently, would you be prepared for our relationship to shift? I don’t know if that answered your question, but that’s where we went.
Curt Widhalm 24:24
I’m thinking about just kind of in the graduate education sorts of stuff that maybe this is because it hasn’t been something that has affected people in my practice until more recently, or been subjects that we’ve explored on the podcast until more recently, but is working with religious trauma and mental health gaining steam now for some reason, or have I just kind of completely missed the boat for the first part of my career, and this just seems to be emerging more in the last few years than it ever previously has.
Dr. Jamie Marich 24:59
A beautiful question. It is gaining more steam. I remember in 2004 when I was in graduate school, I did a paper on spiritual abuse as part of a human development class when we were given an open invitation to write on any topic we wanted and remembering our childhood and having this term kind of come to us, we decided to type it in the search engine in the school library and see if anybody had written anything on spiritual abuse or religious trauma. And most of the literature at that point was about cults, and not so much discussion on how you see it happen in the mainstream, in the kind of churches that line Middle America and whatnot. So yes, I will say having about 20 years of reflection on this, it has gained more steam in recent years. I think part of it is the political climate in the US, and a lot of us who grew up religious, especially Evangelical, are not shocked by like, the current composition of the US Supreme Court and how, yeah, you’re you’re dealing with what many scholars would consider a state sponsored spiritual abuse, because you have such religious people, like very devoutly conservative religious people, who are influencing law and policy that affects all of us. So I think some of it has been the political climate, and a lot of us really having our me too moments with this being like enough. And to that point, I want to say there was a hashtag that started going around in 2017 called ‘churchtoo’, which was an offshoot of the metoo movement. It was developed by a theologian, Emily Joy Allison, who fully recognizes the metoo movement as starting a lot of this speaking out. But I think many of us have been slow to speak out because we’ve been impacted by a lot of this conditioning and brainwashing that if you speak out against God or your family, you’re a bad person. And yeah, you’re free to suffer privately with some of this, but you don’t ruffle the feathers. And I mean, I think a lot of us especially, are just saying enough’s enough for me, having seen so many members of my LGBTQ family die because of this kind of hatred and bigotry and under the thumb of spiritual abuse and religious trauma. It I think, even though I’ve been trying to name this for many years through my career, I know when, when my friend passed away in 2019, when he took his life, that something snapped in me in a good way, when that happened. That we have to be drawing more attention and awareness to just how much bad theology, there’s a book called “Bad Theology Kills.” It’s just think the title says it right there.
Katie Vernoy 28:07
Yeah.
Dr. Jamie Marich 28:07
And, you know, we want people to be more aware of that.
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Curt Widhalm 28:11
One of the things that I’ve seen with some of the clients coming into my practice that have faced spiritual abuse, have faced religious trauma, is just kind of this mistrust of anything while still yearning for some sort of meaning, some sort of belonging out of things. And whether it be a previous therapist, whether it be just kind of, you know, other relationships, not having, like a landing place once they’ve decided to leave their religion, leave their church, whatever it may be. And oftentimes it can set up in the therapeutic relationship just that opportunity to be the next person who lets them down. Now you have a wonderful blog, and we’ll put this over in our show notes that I have shared with some of these clients about that from the beginning of therapy, we’re also going to let these clients down.
Dr. Jamie Marich 29:12
Yes, so Well, there’s a lot of places we could go with that question. It’s a good question. I’m glad that you are a fan of the piece, because I’ll speak to this from both lenses, being kind of the recipient of spiritual conditioning and being now a therapist who is in this position of power in some ways and in many ways, with a lot of folks. So I know when you grow up religious, sometimes this is just growing up in our culture, but it could be our culture, plus growing up religious, really gives you this idea that I cannot say no to other people, that I have to be seen as a good person at all times. And I have to be constantly available to God and my fellow man or my fellow humans, because what would people think of me if I wasn’t? That’s not charitable. And I know as a therapist, I’ve had to unpack a lot of just this notion. Somebody, I remember I was in maybe graduate school, or just after, somebody called our field paid codependency, and that really did, in a certain way that, yeah, many of us get into this because we want to be needed and we want to be helpful. And no, now you get paid to do it, maybe not very well, especially if you’re working agency based. But I’ve had to do a lot of unpacking over the years as a therapist, as a helper, with really being candid with my clients that I have ethical codes I have to adhere to, and I will, even as I’m saying it, it’s so hard for me now to say I will do right by you. I will do my best to do right by you, because inevitably, there will be places as your therapist where I will let you down, because I have to say no, because I have to set boundaries. And I think early in my career as a therapist, I had to do a lot of hard work with that as I struggled to unpack what saying no to someone meant. And I think any therapist could hopefully read that article you’re going to link Curt, and benefit. That, yes, we have to take care of ourselves, and we give lip service to that in these professions, but I think so many of us can be convicted of not actually doing it the way we need to. And why is that? And I think for some of us, it is because of this productivity crunch we need to pay our bills and whatnot. But especially if you’re a therapist who grew up religious or who grew up under any kind of culture of obligation, I’d want you to look at, is this constantly being available, even to your clients, a trauma response of some kind. Now, the other side of this question, I think, is this is another big unburdening that I don’t know if I’ve said so directly in a public space. Yet the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast feels like the perfect place to do it. This is like home for me. So after 20 years of studying spiritual trauma, watching every cult documentary that’s out there, being really acquainted with the cultic dynamics in the therapy field. Because I do write about this in the book, how my cult alarm went off when I got into the EMDR community. Having grown up in high control religion, I know a lot of people will ask, well, is IFS a cult? Is SE a cult? Are there a lot of these therapeutic spaces cults? I go into more detail in the book, and I did an article on this too. Am I in a therapy cult? Cultish, at very least, is how a lot of our field is set up. And so from both the religious side, being a therapy trainer, people want somebody who’s going to give them an exact answer of what to do. I think when a lot of us watch cult documentaries and are mystified by why did they turn over all this power to a guru or to a priest or to a leader? It’s appealing to believe there is someone out there who will give us all the answers. Whether that’s Osho or whether that’s Francine Shapiro or Dick Schwartz, or whether that’s you Curt Widhalm, my therapist. And I think the smartest theology, the smartest therapeutic instruction we can empower people to see is from The Wizard of Oz, when Glenda told Dorothy at the end, you’ve had the answers in you all along. And I will give credit to the guru I studied with. I talk about him because after doing two Christian churches, I also spent a good amount of time at a yoga ashram too, and studying traditional yoga, as if I didn’t have enough, right? And yeah, I call out some of the problems I saw that ashram and with the leadership and whatnot, but the guru I did study with said a true guru, and guru just means one who casts out darkness. It’s a Sanskrit word for teacher that directly comes from that. A true guru helps you see that the real gurus in you, that you have the answers within you. And my guru had even said, once I’ve done that, you can fire me. I’ve done my job. And I believe he did teach me that. So he did his job with me, but I’m still kind of unpacking and exploring, what is this human tendency we have? Maybe I get your two takes on this, to have someone give us all the answers instead of realizing the powers within.
Katie Vernoy 35:15
I think as you were talking, I was just thinking about the phrase or the concept of critical thinking, just kept, like, popping into my brain over and over again. And just how difficult it is to really do critical thinking, right. Like we can teach, this is how you you know we can teach decision making trees, or we can teach those things, but they become dogma or doctrine as well, if we don’t actually teach someone how to understand themselves completely, how we how we teach someone to, like you said, understand the guru within. And so for me, I think there’s, there’s a couple of places I go with with that and with answering your question is, one is: it’s exhausting. It is way easier to let someone tell us what to do and have a knowledge and a righteousness around I am doing the right thing because it’s co signed. There’s also for folks who are putting forward this doctrine or dogma or whatever, there’s there’s a benefit from compliance, right? Like, if someone agrees with me and tells me that what I’m doing is right, and they will, and they then go out in the world and follow my teachings and cast down anyone who who speaks ill of my teachings. I mean, it’s a power trip, obviously, but it’s also, it’s also it helps to, you know, let’s go to the therapy cult element of it, it also helps me to sell stuff, right? And so and so, to me, it feels like there’s this combination of people who would argue they are not compliant, but they would prefer to be compliant than then think critically. That’s my that’s my two cents. And I’ve also, I’ve read that blog, that therapy cult blog, because I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. I think it’s absolutely true.
Curt Widhalm 37:11
I’ve told people in my my practice, people that I work with, a number of times over the years, is, please don’t be like me. There’s already enough of me in this world that…
Dr. Jamie Marich 37:25
Right.
Curt Widhalm 37:25
We don’t need more of what I do. We need more of what you do, and you doing it best. And speaking to this is just kind of to the same process, but to recognize I don’t, I don’t want that responsibility as a clinician to be, you know, I’m still one of those people that’s very scared when clients come in and they’re like, I did what you said last week, and my mind goes to that panic, like, I hope it was good. Like…
Dr. Jamie Marich 37:58
Yes.
Curt Widhalm 37:58
But very much to at least my process, my journey is very similar to yours in the way that it was. It took being able to build myself from inside out, to be able to get to a place of my understanding of how to operate and succeed in the world. And at times I’ve tried on different hats, different shells, kinds of things, kind of and I find that to be the process that most people find for themselves in this as well. So maybe I’m just stumbling through saying what you said in much more succinct words earlier, but I think that at least as far as the therapy process goes and then, being able to find what it is that works for people is really the beauty of our work.
Dr. Jamie Marich 38:57
Amen.
Katie Vernoy 38:59
You know, we’ve kind of had a few different themes in today’s conversation, and we are getting long on time, so we probably have to finish, unfortunately. But, but when we’re talking about people wanting to be told what to do, or people kind of aligning so so strongly with a particular dogma or doctrine, I feel like it can show up in the therapy room in this need to be the perfect therapist, and to to have our clients love us universally and and all of that. And it’s also much harder if I as a human don’t completely understand you and I fail you in some way, and then we repair and we build ourselves separately versus becoming this. I’m not, I don’t have good words. Blob. We can become this blob of, you know, kind of compliance, and, you know, good feelings versus the hard work of, what do I believe? What do you believe? How do we live in this space? How do we help each other grow. I mean, maybe that’s more than than most people will say about being a therapist, but I feel like every client’s helped me grow. But it individuation, the differentiation that happens in the therapy room can sometimes be what’s needed, and if therapists don’t do that work and stumble and and don’t require this, like, follow what I say, and you’ll be healed. I think it becomes a much richer experience, but it’s it’s a lot harder.
Dr. Jamie Marich 40:27
And I’ll just end by saying the blob of compliance would be an excellent book title.
Curt Widhalm 40:35
Where could people find out more about you and all of the wonderful things that you do, and most importantly, where can they find your book?
Dr. Jamie Marich 40:43
Great. Well, I have my online presence paired down to three websites now. So jamiemarich.com, is just my name.com. Is where you can find out all about the books. Links to pre order them. Order them. Redefinetherapy.com is my resources site now. It’s one stop shopping for everything I’ve done that’s complimentary online. I’ll have a link to this podcast up there too. And then instituteforcreativemindfulness.com is our EMDR therapy training program central site with all of our faculty network members and consultants. We’re very proud to have Curt as a consultant with ICM, and yeah, I’m on all the socials. If you search my name, you’ll find me, although my favorite handle is on Tiktok and that is trauma therapist rants.
Curt Widhalm 41:32
We will include links to all of those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com, and follow us on our social media, join us in our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with this conversation, and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Dr. Jamie Marich.
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