Healing From The Long Shadow Of Religious And Cultural Conditioning

Hello beautiful soul. If you grew up in a very strict environment or have been raised or exposed to strict religious or other cult dynamics in your life this post may be both helpful and challenging for you. Please read with care for yourself.

We are all a product of the culture in which we are raised, or immersed in at various stages of or lives. Like a petri dish, the surroundings in which we grow influences what we learn to be good, ‘normal’, right… and their opposite; bad, unacceptable, wrong.

When manipulation, shame and punishment are ‘normalised’ as behavioural moderation tools, it can lead to lasting damage to your sense of self, your ability to participate in relating effectively as a ‘whole’ and cause your nervous system to become overwhelmed and trained to recognise abuse as love.

The long and insidious shadow of your specific cultural conditioning can impact you throughout your life but it’s not programming that needs to stay ‘stuck’. You can unwind the tendrils of these deeply embedded beliefs to create the space to be your most authentic self and free yourself from beliefs and behaviours that have kept you trapped in cycles of pain.

As an adult who grew up in a strict, religious or cult dynamic you might:

1) Struggle to say no: boundaries and self-autonomy are big no-no’s in cultures of control.

Enmeshment (lack of boundaries and/or forced violations of boundaries), shame and fear are used as control tactics to police behaviour. This leaves you without capacity to voice your intuition or act on your own volition. Quite often you’ll literally lose your voice if asked a direct question that could risk you losing face or a desired connection.

Verbal consent could be a huge challenge for you due to your programming of agreement and conformity equalling safety.

A baseline of people-pleasing behaviour is conditioned by going along with the majority/leaders/power holders being the expectation and disagreement being punished.

Emotional violence might have included:

·         Ostracism (if you do x you’ll be excommunicated),

·         Humiliation or other shaming tactics (such as ridicule, being made an example of, withdrawal of love or other essentials like food, freedom, clothing, shelter-e.g. no meal if you until you x, being locked in or out for periods with out food or adequate attire), or

Punished with physical violence such may have included:

·         spanking,

·         hitting by hand or other implements: belt, strap, wooden spoon, cane or

·         other physical punishment (kneel for extended period to redeem oneself, cold shower, soap/chilli in mouth for ‘blasphemny’)

2) Not know how to trust yourself - having your personal choices over-ridden or punished by an external mediator (priest/guru/parent/doctrine) erodes your self-trust and ability to develop trust in your own intuition through embodied action (experiential learning). In practice this could show up as always seeking out a ‘sounding board’ to affirm your ideas before acting on them. This is seeking external validation of your internally generated desires and choices and can be self-resourced with practice.

3) Not know how to trust others, or to trust blindly without discernment - your trust and judgment can also be impaired through these dynamics.

Being taught that the truth lies outside of you in some one else’s rules, beliefs or decisions disempowers your connection with you own innate wisdom and disrupts your ability to act on it. This makes it easy to dispel any ‘gut feelings’ and mistake familiarly for integrity.

If your experience included a lack of being seen for who you are and loved/accepted as that, you may find yourself susceptible to grasping on to the tiniest scraps of love and kindness offered to you. You might also have a tendency to get ‘drunk on love’ because it feels so intoxicating to receive any form of warmth and acceptance if you came from an austere emotional environment.

Because this type of trauma leaves your BS-radar is miscalibrated, if your set-point for love equals enmeshment, this can see you blown wide open and connected to deeply, too soon without testing the full potential of your friends, partners or business associates.

This can result in feeling, or being, taken advantage of, ending up in abusive relationships that mimic your childhood dynamics and losing money or being susceptible to scammers or poor-fit business partners.

4) Tend toward hyper independence and/or rebellion - if you’ve managed to escape your past and use your powerful inner strength to develop your own path forward it could also be possible that could take things to the opposite extreme and find it hard to let others in.

Or, in your desire to not become what you came from, you might get stuck in a cycle of behaviour that feels oppositional in defiance the thing that shaped you.  In this case you may have physically escaped by be still living mentally and emotionally in what you wanted to escape from.

The dynamic of independence can seem helpful and is often championed by society. But in extreme it can also be counterproductive, keeping you isolated from others and often reaching burnout as you insist on doing everything yourself, your own way.

If rebelling was your response it might see you trapped in a cycle of behaviour that is actually damaging to your wellbeing. Pain suppression, escaping and internalised punishment can include excessive or impulsive drug & alcohol use, overconsumption (food, sex, things, activities including exercise: CrossFit, Yoga, breathwork and other ‘spiritualised’ physical practises can have similar cult dynamics and conformity at their centre so ‘feel like home’) and perpetual self abandonment/avoidance of the self through: being an over worker (busyness), being hyper social (life of the party, being the one ‘always there’ for others in your friend or family group), being the over-functioner in your friendships, relationships, family or workplace (the martyr or self sacrificer), being overly present on or dependent on social media for connection and self-perception.

5) Believe you have to perform (consciously or unconsciously) - shape shifting, being the adaptable chameleon is a great way to make sure you to fit in or show up in the particular way that gets your needs met. It can also look like putting on a brace face, saving face, losing weight, being fitter/hotter/prettier/wealthier/more pious, taking up less space or otherwise editing yourself in any way in order to be deserving, loved or accepted, valued, appreciated, or respected - in friendships, intimate relationships, family dynamics, in public life (including social media) and in the workplace.

This. Shit. Is. Exhausting.  It’s the #1 cause of burnout, social anxiety, and feeling ‘drained’ by your interactions. You do not owe anyone the illusion of perfection. You do not owe anyone a smile, your time, your energy (parents of dependent children excluded! But you do owe it to yourself first!), your understanding when they violate your boundaries, or any performative measure (except maybe fulfilling your job description if you plan on staying in employment!).

The energetic scraps of the ‘I am good enough’ movement are rooted in this conditioning –it’s internalised oppression that’s become it’s own cultural paradigm.

Actually, you are WAY BETTER than ‘enough’. You are so much MORE than the bare minimum. And you don’t need to be ‘worthy’ of anything - that’s patriarchal conditioning also and it belongs in the bin. You are a mass of energy possessed by a ghost of soulfire, inhabiting a gas-filled rock that is hurtling through space. You are a living, breathing MAGICAL MIRACLE. You are capable of owning your badass bag of bones and doing whatever you want with it!

How to start healing

If you recognise experience in any of the above descriptions don’t despair, be hard on yourself or shame yourself. Internalising these is a symptom of the system you were in. You CAN change both your beliefs and behaviours to find freedom, peace and a strong connection to your authentic self again (it’s always been there!).

Start with:

·         Gentle curiosity – start to become interested in your choices, actions, reactions and especially your judgements-they are a great mirror for what might need some loving attention from the inside.

·         Compassionate awareness is the place of potential –once we’ve got some wisdom around our why’s we can start dedicating some time to specific inner work to welcome back the parts of ourselves that had been shamed, ostracised, denied, buried in order for us to cope, fit in and survive.

·         Neuroception and nervous system regulation – understanding your body’s states and signals and equipping yourself with tools and techniques to respond to them in ways that free up more of your ‘self’ to show up can start the process of freeing you from trauma trapped in your system. With this comes the capacity to be comfortable in your own skin and respond instead of react.

·         Grieving – to grieve what you lost, missed out on or have suffered thorough might be an important part of this stage for you too.

·         Acceptance and forgiveness – may be part of your journey too. But don’t pressure yourself-that’s just your conditioning talking, your inner wisdom and your nervous system-when fully supported-will lead you to your personalised version of peace and closure.

·         Practice - Living into your learning is the embodiment and integration of your process-and is therefore ongoing. Like a spiral, you might go through many layers or iterations of learning, healing, releasing and returning to yourself both through your own inner work and the work that will be presented to you through life in your relationships and interactions- both with others and your own evolving self perception over time.

·         Seek support - This work is profoundly more possible in a safe, supportive relational container. You DO NOT have to relive/retell your trauma story in order to heal. Somatic practices work with what’s arising in the moment to help resource your nervous system to release trapped trauma and create new set points for peace.  As you unwind your body you create more space for effective communication with your mind – allowing more choice to change your beliefs and create new meaning that serves the authentic you.

It would be my honour to walk beside you as you dive into and through these shadows. I’ve seen many clients begin to thrive and return to thier incredible, magnificent, powerful, loving, creative, passionate, peaceful and content [insert favourite adjective here!] self  - I know you can too!  

All of the techniques I use in my personalised approach to your therapy I’ve used and found highly effective on myself. I combine the best of modern science’s evidence based systems with the simplest and most effective approaches tried and tested by the sages through the ages to bring you a full spectrum approach to being yourself: body, mind and energy/soul/spirit.

If you’re curious and ready, join me today on the path towards embodied integration. 5, 10 and 20 hour personalised healing packages available.