Religion – they tell you that you are loved unconditionally,
and then they teach you all the conditions – Anon

I’m participating in a research study about coping mechanisms and support for people leaving high-demand religions. Some of the fastest growing groups in this category are ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses and ex-Mormons. There’s often little outside support or framework to help those who leave high-demand communities to deal with integrating back into ordinary life. Some people can happily leave religion without a backward glance, but others can find deconstruction very traumatic.

Deconstruction is a term that means to break something down, to take it apart and study it to understand its meaning. It’s often used in a critical search to expose flaws, biases, and inconsistencies. It’s deep-diving into a subject to discover what it means to you, and how you feel about it.

Both of the above religions encourage or instruct members to only learn about the religion from trusted sources. These sources will be church sanctioned authored works. However, it’s not easy to come to an unbiased conclusion when you are only allowed approved sources. Deconstruction allows you to research and discover from all the available information and come to terms with information you often haven’t been privy to before.

Leaving a religion or community you chose to be part of, or were born into, can leave you with many emotions, from deep loss, to huge relief, depending on your standpoint. People are all different, and some can shrug their shoulders and walk away without any lasting issues, while others can feel highly traumatised, struggling with reintegration, shame, guilt, regret, and more. 

Religious trauma is a difficult thing to navigate, and can equate to many things from abuse, sexual assault, guilt, shame, financial difficulties, and just managing your life of freedom after you’ve lived a strict regime for so long. We’ve seen many stories of sexual abuse within religion from the high-profile Catholic scandals to smaller or covered-up stories in other religions. I’ve seen and experienced it several times within the religion I was brought up in. This kind of trauma is highly damaging to those that endure it.

Often people don’t take religious trauma seriously, because they’ve simply never experienced it, or cannot believe that a religion they love so much can cause trauma. Just because someone finds themselves easily fitting into the archetype of a specific religion it doesn’t mean everyone will. Accepting that religion works for some and is wrong for someone else is a healthy response. There should be no right or wrong, and no conditioning or shaping someone into something they are not. Judgement should be spared; after all, religion cannot be proven or disproven, so no one should preach the only, single truth when myriad ways exist to live happily.

It’s hard to talk about religious trauma as it’s taken time for me to deconstruct, and to accept both the blessings and regrets I have about the way I was brought up. I used to believe I had no regrets, that everything was a teaching moment, a time to grow, and that I hadn’t missed out on anything. However, I lived a life that was given to me, not forced – because my parents joined a religion that they truly believed and thought was best for their family – but being born inside a specific organisation or belief sees you growing up conditioned to their way of thinking, and that tends to negate choice.

I did miss a lot. I tried, as a teen, to live two separate lives – an inside and an outside life. The one where I felt free was my outside life, and I thought I knew myself during that time, and maybe I did.

But my cage had been set from a young age, and when I tried to be who I really was, it was wrong. I couldn’t wear the clothes I felt myself in, I could not pierce my ears more than once, and showing cleavage, shoulders, or anything above the knee was chastened. I was told not to swear, I wasn’t allowed to drink tea or coffee, and I never knowingly touched alcohol. I couldn’t experiment with teenage life, I was taught to feel shame for learning about appropriate intimacy in the most natural teenage way, and I wasn’t allowed to openly rebel, and, so, I was conditioned to conform.

The teachings of my religion were taught in programs that began at the age of three, continuing through to eighteen, including extra-curricular scripture studying programs during the exam years at school. Teachings are then taught in repetitive rotations throughout adult life, with that caveat of not learning from non-approved sources. 

This was an early pattern that my life followed as I tried to be good. I tried to follow the doctrines I’d been taught. I then taught those doctrines to my own children. That was where the cracks appeared to me. I revisited things I’d been taught as a teen, and some of it shocked me. When you are deep inside a faith, it can be difficult to see the problematic parts of it. When you are teaching people you love and respect more than anyone else, you begin to question things that don’t resonate with the values you suddenly realise you have.

My children, seeing some of the principles with a contemporary view, found that most of it did not fit their life perspectives. My views, whilst bringing up my children, had also changed as I tried to give them compassionate, open-minded morals and ethics. When my children left as young adults I was finally able to give myself permission to leave.

After over a decade of questioning, counselling, and attempting to find myself, I left the religion that I didn’t fit into, and stepped into a world I didn’t really understand. To begin with I felt huge relief, but that was tinged with feelings of guilt and shame that had followed me since I was young, and anger that conditioning had stopped me finding out where I was meant to be for so long.

After leaving religion I had counselling from a lovely woman who helped me combat my feelings of guilt and shame, and other situations I’d found myself in due to naivety. Counselling, these days, is something you look for yourself. It’s out there, but I wish it was easier to obtain. It’s been pretty essential to me several times throughout my life.

Deconstruction is a major part of working through trauma. Finding what you believe, what you want, and what you need. Breaking down the constructs, the beliefs, concepts, and doctrines you were moulded with, and dissecting, researching, and finally coming to terms with who you were and who you have become.

I have been reading Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control by Luna Lindsey Corbden for over a year to help navigate my own faith crisis. It’s taken so long because there are many triggers, there’s a lot to unpack, and it takes time to work through.

My own deconstruction, the peeling back of decades of taming, is tough, but rewarding. The notion of rebellion has lost the demonization it had carried as a teen, and become a vehicle of exploration, discovery, and fun. I can now show cleavage, have multiple piercings, tattoos, and not feel shame about living life to the full. Sometimes, you just need to be bad, and teenage me is revelling in it!  

As a family we finally discovered what we needed and where we belong. I’ve been married almost 35 years now, and we’re the happiest, closest, and the best we’ve ever been together. It’s beautiful.

I’ve discovered who I am with complete freedom and authenticity.
An anchor that had been weighing me down for my entire life has lifted,
and its chains broken, and I now,
lazily swim in an ocean of new and delightful discoveries.