Episode 142 - Understanding Religious Trauma Part 2 with Kendra Hill
Some social structures can hold us for a time, but if they don’t expand as we grow, they eventually become suffocating and cause more harm than good. The decision to step out of that container can feel destabilizing, but it opens you up to a deeper sense of self-trust and allows you to see your own growth with more clarity. In part two of my conversation with licensed therapist Kendra Hill, we explore her Religious Trauma Checklist and discuss how naming these patterns can help you recognize the progress you’ve already made, and continue unraveling religious trauma with love. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, make sure to start there. Here’s what we cover:
Why it can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you when you lose religious certainty
How trauma reorganizes your inner world and why old structures eventually stop working
The grief of outgrowing a belief system or community that once felt like home
Kendra’s “soup” metaphor for rejecting everything before reclaiming what still fits
What it looks like to rebuild self-trust and walk away from environments that don’t honor you
Kendra Hill is a neurodivergent artist, beauty seeker, exvangelical, and believer in people. By profession she is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Colorado and an online coach across the nation with a specific focus on providing space for those who have some kind of religious background, religious trauma, are deconstructing their faith, or come from high control environments. She has recently relocated to New York City but remains passionate about holding space for people's stories - especially the ones it seems like no one else understands. Kendra co-owns a private practice called Unraveling Free Therapy & Coaching and is currently accepting new clients.
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Transcript
Sara Bybee Fisk 00:57
One of the things that I have bumped up against as I have unraveled my behavior from people pleasing and codependent tendencies is my religious upbringing. What I was taught to believe, what I was taught to believe about God and how he looks at me and how I'm supposed to please him by being obedient and there's has been a lot there for me and maybe there is for you too. I hear a lot from women who grew up in religious congregations, sometimes very conservative like mine and how scary it is to not please people anymore, especially when God is involved. So my conversation with Kendra Hill on religious trauma speaks directly to that.We define it, we talk about what it is, what it isn't and how to begin to unravel it with love. Kendra is a licensed therapist. She is neurodivergent. She is a beauty seeker and an ex evangelical herself and she really believes deeply in people. I think you're going to love this conversation. Part two, you have a really great handout. I'm going to link to your website where people can sign up to get it. It's a religious trauma checklist and we've gone through just a lot of them just in our discussion. There's just a couple more that I want to highlight because they really kind of stood out to me. This is something that I see a lot in people. I often struggle with shame, believing I'm unworthy and or I hold a low view of myself. It's this idea of like I'm constantly a sinner. I'm constantly doing something wrong. There's always something wrong with me or something I should be working to improve. Like I'm a constant 24 seven self-improvement project.
Kendra Hill 02:47
Mm-hmm. Why would anybody believe that they're wrong coming from these belief systems? Doesn't make any sense, right? I'm just kidding. That didn't land, but...
Sara Bybee Fisk 03:04
Well, it's so fascinating because our desire for certainty as humans is so strong. And when someone hands us this, like this is the way it is, these are the rules you're supposed to follow, and this is the outcome that you get when you follow those rules. And God is like this cosmic vending machine and you put your good behavior in and then you get to push a prize and it's wealth or health in this life or eternal reward in the life to come. And I can understand why that feels so compelling as a human. I totally wanna know what happens. But the sense of the rug being pulled out from under you when you just can't make sense that it works that way anymore. When you kind of come out of that certainty bubble, I just, there were days when I felt like the very ground underneath my feet was moving. Like nothing felt fixed, nothing felt true, nothing felt reliable anymore. Because if that wasn't true, what else wasn't true?
Kendra Hill 04:18
Yeah it kind of makes me think of another way to maybe describe what happens with trauma and bear with me here because this is just like coming to me but I'm thinking about how you know internally we organize ourselves around what happens to us in life and so if something happens that's super overwhelming to the point where we struggle to cope where it overwhelms our nervous system then essentially what's happening inside is that these structures the way that we have structured ourselves the way that we have organized ourselves inside it's like a bomb goes off or if it's chronic it's like something's wearing away at those structures right and there has to be some type of reorganization to help us feel stable like we can move through the world and personally my story is like I said I didn't grow up in this really fundamentalist evangelical Christian environment that a lot of people I see have grown up in but I did grow up in a pretty traumatic environment and I carried a lot of trauma with me into college and when I found this campus ministry it was like yes here's the blueprint for how I can rebuild in my inside world that feels like it's just shattered right and just laying in shambles and needs so much work oh it was such a relief and that's why I say like I needed it I needed that blueprint and a lot of neurodivergent folks really latch onto that like that structure and that guidebook and like yes yes I need this but then you know we continue to progress we continue to develop and at some point we're like these structures are now harming me but why and how and what do I do with that and then what you're describing this the rug being pulled out from under you is what a lot of people feel when they start to deconstruct it's like well what the fuck I had this whole structure this was the answer and it didn't hold me now what do I do and it's a pile of rubble again
Sara Bybee Fisk 07:05
That is such a good point. I think so many people who are in kind of the first half of life where we really need a structure, we really need, like you said, that guidebook, the community that loves us and kind of holds us up. I mean, the promise of a community that loves and sees us is so powerful. And I do believe it actually exists in some places.And if a community cannot grow with you and honor you as you change and your beliefs shift, then that's when, for me, it began to feel like, I can't be myself here. I'm growing and changing and I am doubting this or I'm coming to believe that this might not be what you said it was, or it might not be for me what I needed to be for me. And that experience isn't honored here. In fact, it's punished. And so for a lot of people who start off really loved, I loved the structure of my religious community. I loved knowing exactly what was going to come next. The thinking had been done for me and all I had to do was kind of show up every week and serve and believe and be faithful and keep the rules until it felt like I was being kind of torn apart from the inside out of like, I can't be who I really am here anymore. My children can't be. I have a daughter who is gay and that's not okay in Mormon land. And there's a lot of things that happen for a lot of us in religious communities that are not okay and can't be honored and are actually punished. And that's leads to a lot of deconstruction and that experience that you articulated so beautifully.
Kendra Hill 09:02
Yeah, and I think that's the case for a lot of people. I often talk about how when we're babies, some babies, not all babies like to be swaddled, but that swaddling is so important for some babies to help them calm down and to suit them. But if you kept the swaddle that tight or if it stayed the same shape, then that baby wouldn't be able to grow and thrive. And I feel like that's what can happen with these structures.They can hold us for a time and they can actually really be what we needed for a time. But then when we start to change and grow and those aren't able to change or expand with us, there's so much tension. And it's like we can go a couple of different ways. We can make ourselves smaller and we can cut off parts of ourselves. I'm so glad this didn't happen in your family, but it could have been like, well, that's just not allowed. And so we're going to stay here. And it makes sense when people do that. I get it. That sense of belonging is so compelling and it's so scary to leave that. But then you're living a life just not able to be fully yourself. You're cutting off parts of you or like trying to fit into a shape that you were never made to stay in. And so people expand beyond that and sometimes decide, okay, I need to step out of this container now.
Sara Bybee Fisk 10:42
Oh, I have such empathy and compassion for when you feel yourself kind of pushing against the limitations and it can be a religious community. It can even just be like a past kind of iteration of your life, you know, like the rules and kind of structure that aren't necessarily religious, but that you used to think were good and right for yourself.And so finding out who you really are and really deeply trusting who you are and your ability to know things and guide yourself and be kind of this sovereign authority is such, it's such a beautifully messy journey. If someone is listening and either recognizing some of this in themselves or curious about it, how would they begin to investigate it and maybe even start to heal it?
Kendra Hill 11:42
I really think that I'm really thankful for this conversation and I'm thankful that more conversations like this are happening. I just heard from someone the other day that they more recently deconstructed and they had the wonderful privilege of having all of this information, these terms. They've been exposed to the term religious trauma. There are more resources around it. There are books written about it now, which wasn't the case a handful of years ago. And so I would say even just that, being able to name what is happening is huge.That's a huge first step. So I mean, truly that quiz on our website about if you have religious trauma, if you're curious, look at that quiz or look at a blog post or start reading about what religious trauma is and see if you can relate. And if you can, it can be really hard because a lot of times the people you have around you that you would normally go to when things come up that you need to process are probably not going to be able to process this with you because it would also cause them to start to pull some threads that they might not be ready to pull and then have their own belief system unravel too. But sometimes you have people who can relate. Anyway, I'm going on a tangent. Learning more, reaching out to, there are lots of like Instagram creators now who talk about religious trauma, even like being part of a community online to start to notice, okay, I'm not alone. There are other people who are going through this. That can be huge because it can feel so isolating. And then reaching out to, I mean, a practice like ours Unraveling Free where we're not just solely focusing on religious trauma, but it's the therapist who understand the nuances of it. So you don't have to start from scratch explaining like what your background is, who can understand like some of what can come up in this process. That's an option too. Yeah, does that answer?
Sara Bybee Fisk 14:24
Yes. That's great.And I just want to kind of recall something that you said earlier that you really try to keep in mind and that someone that you talk to about this needs to be someone who can point you back to yourself, your own authority, your own, even if it feels like it's barely there, right? You're a little baby foal who's just been born and can't even really walk upright. Totally fine. They still need to point you back to yourself and your ability to know, even if it feels uncomfortable or unsure right now. And that curiosity over time, if you're being gentle and if you're being gracious and if you're being generous with yourself, it will grow into higher and higher, stronger levels of self-trust and self-authority.
Kendra Hill 15:21
Yeah. And so you were telling me when we were talking before that you looked at that religious trauma checklist and used it to actually see the progress that you've made in your own healing.
Sara Bybee Fisk 15:34
Totally. When I first downloaded it, I went through it. It's fantastic. I want everyone to take a look at it, so it will for sure be linked.But there were so many, for example, I have a deep fear of being judged for who I am. I think I have an average human, but the deep, the paralyzing fear, it's gone. Another one is trusting myself feels wrong or dangerous. No, trusting myself feels like absolutely the right decision. And even before we started recording, I was describing to you a meeting that I was in this morning, and it was a training about how to host in-person group events so that there's connection and so that people find community together, which I'm very interested in doing. But there were aspects of the meeting that in my body just felt like, nope, there was the ask for details of intimate experiences or intimate details, meaning how have I transformed or where am I learning and growing? And to me, that feels like I want to know you a little better before I open up about the things that are in my heart. And so there was this request for intimacy that didn't feel earned. There was demands for participation that didn't feel genuine. I was being asked to agree, and everybody else was nodding their head and agreeing in ways that didn't feel authentic. And so in a lot of ways, I can look at who I am now. And a lot of this feels like it is in a much better place than it was when I first came out of church experience. And I also always see room for growth. I still get stuck sometimes, and there is a right way to do things. And I still feel sometimes a sense of I'm behind. And while everybody else was learning how to be these amazing self-actualized humans in the world, I was busy learning how to be a good Mormon. And I can feel even some some embarrassment sometimes that I don't know things that either other women my age know, or I didn't have experiences that other women my age had. I wasn't sleeping around and drinking my way through college. That kind of excludes me from conversations. And that's just one example, right? There's others, but I still think it shows up for me, even culturally, in some ways, I have five children, a lot of people are like, Oh, my gosh, white, five children. And I have to understand like, yep, when that's the measurement of faithfulness in your religious tradition, that's what you do. And so I still bump up against some some feelings about it sometime.
Kendra Hill 18:36
Yeah, of course, and that makes so much sense. And I love what you're bringing though, because it's realistic, right? There's hope that if you have religious trauma, it doesn't have to control your life forever. And you're an example, and there are so many examples of people who have not stayed in the darkest grips of religious trauma. There's so much hope for that.And of course, these things affect you. They're part of your development. And I think the difference is, you know, we talk about mental wellness in our field, not being that these things don't ever come up, but when they do come up, you know how to navigate them and you trust yourself to navigate them. You don't have to use those same strategies of avoiding or bypassing or pushing them away, seeking external authority, whatever it is. You actually get to navigate them now.
Sara Bybee Fisk 19:39
That is such a beautiful definition of what, I don't know, if you want to call it healing, I know that word gets used a lot, but that you have the tools to navigate it. You trust yourself to navigate it. You feel some sturdiness or some resilience that you didn't feel before.I find, you know, that I also, it feels like I come back to myself faster. Like when I was sitting in that meeting this morning, I was like, this isn't very comfortable. I don't really like this. I was like, I don't have to be here. And I left, you know, and a full hour and a half early, I was just like, I'm done with this. And so I felt like that was a moment of like, oh, you know what? You don't have to stay here. You don't ever have to do anything you don't truly want to do again. And I felt it and was able to kind of step out.
Kendra Hill 20:30
I love that example and the phrase, you don't have to stay here, so liberating.
Sara Bybee Fisk 20:36
Yeah. The last thing that I want to name that I think I'm just really beginning to understand that has been part of my process and I'm interested in your thoughts is I'm also able to look back at some of the good things that happened to me because I grew up Mormon with genuine appreciation and also acknowledgement that it might not have been the healthiest or the best way to do it. Like there is a shadow side to it as well.And let me give you an example. Many young Mormon kids really serve missions in other parts of the world. I know that mission trips are kind of a practice in a lot of Christian faiths. And my mission was to Bolivia. I loved it. I loved learning Spanish and learning to love that people. It's a country that I continue to visit and work in today as part of a charitable organization. And also there were some highly inappropriate, dangerous positions that I was put in that were wildly inappropriate for a 21 year old, 22 year old woman to navigate alone.And so being able to kind of hold the good and name the bad, which is very different for everybody and is very individual and to let what was good for me matter to me and what didn't work for me and what was bad to me matter to me, even if I'm the only one who feels that way. You know, if I'm in a room full of people and they're like, no, missions are amazing. I still feel like I get to say, this part was, I appreciated and love this part. And this part was not good and amazing for me.
Kendra Hill 22:33
That's beautiful that you can do that now. And I think what I want to emphasize there is I feel like that is a particular place that you can get to in your healing process. And I just want to name that for people who are listening who are like, hell no, I am nowhere near that place.Because I think people often have to go through this process of, I kind of have this metaphor of you know, there you have some soup, and you've been eating this soup for a long time. And all of a sudden, you realize that it's been making you very sick. And you can't eat the soup anymore. And so you you don't go anywhere near any of the ingredients that were in that soup. Because you need to get away from it, you need to recover, you can't be reminded of it, it's gonna it's gonna cause these certain like reactions in your body if you get close to it. And that is really valid. That's a really valid part of getting out of a system that is controlling you, or that you feel stuck in. And so then as you do some more, you know, processing around it, I think that's where you can start to slowly introduce like, well, I really liked the carrots. Let me try the carrots and see, was that making me sick? And I can I can trust myself to know, right, I can taste the carrot and I can go, is that making me sick? Or do I want that? Do I like that? Is that nourishing to my body? Okay, yes. But this part of the soup, this base, that that made me sick, right. And so that can be a bit of a process of like, what can I reintroduce? What can I look back on and be grateful for without that feeling like such a threat anymore?
Sara Bybee Fisk 24:27
Bye. I'm so glad that you said it that way. Because that was the process for me. I had to kind of reject everything. And then come back to, well, that was okay. And there were some things that I loved about that experience or learned. And I don't ever want to do it again.Eating carrots for me at that time to borrow your metaphor. There were some good things that I learned from that. And I never want to eat carrots again. And there is no right way to do this. I have so many, you know, just the aspect of growing up in Mormonism is sometimes prevalent in other religious groups as well. And that women are supposed to have children and stay home with them. And I know so many women who have so much grief around becoming mothers, when they really, it wasn't a choice they were consciously making because they couldn't really choose to not be a mother without being punished or looked down on. And so they have really complicated feelings about their children. They've really complicated feelings about the experience of being a wife or a mother about not being able to explore other parts of them.And you never ever have to feel good about that. I don't want to be misunderstood at all that I have learned to find some things that were good that I can appreciate doesn't mean that that is the process for anyone else. And so I really love the way that you described rejecting it all. And then if anything comes back as something that you want to honor, that's completely up to you.
Kendra Hill 26:10
Yeah, and I love your addition. I think it's so important that you may not want to add something back, but you can still appreciate it from before.
Sara Bybee Fisk 26:18
Yeah, it's possible. And just to honor kind of the grief that I think kind of runs through a lot of these experiences and of not being able to choose and not knowing exactly what it was that we were doing or agreeing to or tying ourselves down to is something that comes up over and over and over again. And there isn't an end to my own grief and grieving process. And so if that feels familiar to you too as well, well, you're in good company.Is there anything that you want to say that you haven't been able to say so far in our conversation that you really, really want to make sure it gets added?
Kendra Hill 26:59
Nothing is coming to mind.
Sara Bybee Fisk 27:01
And I just really appreciate your thoughtfulness and wisdom, because I think also inherent in this conversation is, okay, well, how do I fix it? Who's the authority who's going to tell me how I fix this, right?And we just kind of bounce from one person telling us what to do to another. And so I feel like the way that you have answered so many of these questions is with some good information, a couple of like touch points, but a real appreciation for the individual nature of this and the fact that you can trust yourself to do it. And so I have really loved this conversation.
Kendra Hill 27:50
Oh, thank you for saying that. And that means a lot. That means so much to hear.And as you say that, I can just feel myself getting emotional because it is so what I want for people to trust themselves and believe in themselves. And I'm really, really aware that the mental health field, or the coaching space, like any of these places, can become fundamentalists, right? And so I appreciate that too about our conversation, that we don't want fundamentalism in any form. We just want to talk about it. And ultimately, we want people to be informed enough to explore their own experiences and do what they need to do.
Sara Bybee Fisk 28:36
To that end, your website and the checklist will all be linked in the show notes, and I would really encourage anyone who is curious about the role of religious trauma to contact Kendra and Casey, the other therapist, in her practice, because I never think it's a bad idea to just have a conversation. And I can imagine that there are some people out there who have some niggling questions now, have a conversation. And if it results in working together fantastic, if it results in just some better information or something to work on next, also, that's never a bad idea.So thank you so much, Kendra, for this conversation.
Kendra Hill 29:19
Mmm, thanks for having me, Sara.
