The Disease of Self
Krispin interviews Dr. Mark G. Karris, therapist and author of The Diabolical Trinity: Healing Religious Trauma from a Wrathful God, Tormenting Hell, and a Sinful Self. They talk about “In the Light” by DC Talk.
Mark has written other books, including Religious Refugees: (De)Constructing Toward Spiritual and Emotional Healing and Divine Echoes: Reconciling Prayer With The Uncontrolling Love Of God
In the episode Mark mentions Brian Peck and also Kristen Neff’s work in self compassion. Here’s a link to some of her guided mediations that I really like.
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TRANSCRIPT
Mark
Krispin: [00:00:00] today I'm here with Mark, who just published a book called The Diabolical Trinity. I know that there's a subtitle --
Mark: Healing Religious Trauma from a Wrathful God, Tormenting hell and a Sinful Self.
Krispin: It is great. Like, I think that hits on three really important things today. We're gonna be talking about that sinful self theology. Although they're, they're all tied together, so, um, I'm sure the other pieces will come up as well a little bit. Um, but I'm just so excited to have you, um, on the podcast today.
Mark, you are a religious trauma therapist.
Mark: hmm.
Krispin: Is that how you identify yourself?
Mark: Um, you know, any, anytime someone says This is who I am, a little bit of me cringes cuz I always avoid labels, but I'm, I don't know. I, I'm a, I am, am licensed therapist who specializes in a twofold niche of religious trauma and couples therapy.
Krispin: Mm, [00:01:00] mm-hmm.
Mark: sort of my, my shtick, my domain, my, yeah. Scope of competence.
Krispin: Yeah. And so, uh, today we're gonna talk about, uh, DC Talk “In the Light.”
I feel like it's one of the like top songs on the album. There are a lot of top songs on the album, but it's definitely not a skippable one. And before we started recording, you reminded me that DC talk didn't actually write it, it was written by Charlie Peacock, right?
Mark: Right. Right. And, and like I shared, regardless, they were the, the megaphone that proclaimed it loudly to the world.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: They have just as much of a influence in, in getting that message across, which, we'll, we'll talk about more, probably.
Krispin: Before we go there to DC talk, how did you end up in this religious trauma space?
Mark: it's uh, yeah, that's a long road to get here, but, um, the beginnings of my religious trauma probably started when I was, uh, I became a Christian when I was 21, so I won't get into the full conversion story, but it's pretty epic.
Krispin: Not gonna give us a testimony this morning?
Mark: I mean, it is freaking powerful, but it is an epic drama filled with drugs, mayhem, violence and abuse.
Mark: Mother passed away from a drug overdose and father mentally ill and abusive and, you know, a cutter and depressed and hopeless and, and then introducing Jesus, uh, at 21. And that was a very profound experience for me.
I consider myself a master deconstructionist, but I can't fully deconstruct that conversion experience that I had in a field all by myself where there was no smog machine and smoke and people, and you know, any coercion whatsoever. I just remember the last words that I said “I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And if you're real, then show yourself to me.” And so that was a profound experience. It changed my life, but I was, as I say it, I was saved from one hell into another.
Krispin: Mm.
Mark: it was a Oneness Pentecostal church -- very strict. They were the only ones who were saved, weren't allowed to hang out with people who believed in the Trinity. You weren't saved a few if you'd never spoken tongues, cuz that was a true sign of one receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. I came from a progressive metal hardcore band. And so I wasn't allowed to have long hair because there's a passage in Corinthians that talks about. If a man has long hair, don't, you know, the nature itself teaches that it's some sort of a shame into himself or something.
You know, they're finding these verses and so pretty wild, religious, very strict, and so that had a profound effect. And then of course, eternal conscious torment. Always trying to be saved, even though like, I'm like, “I thought Jesus saved me,” but I was always at the alter call, God saved me a sinful, evil worm of a human being. So that was sort of the start of, you know, I didn't know religious trauma then. But after I got out of what I would consider a cult experience and, you know, I don't wanna split it all bad. There were some great members, uh, in that church and a pastor's wife, very kind. And nonetheless there were some consequences. And then getting into, uh, after that other churches and other church experiences, And then all that to say that really shaped, uh, who I was and what I was dealing with. And then as a therapist, encountering many people dealing with religious trauma and then just social media and all the people that were saying, Hey, I've been hurt by this stuff. It sort of, uh, yeah, it, it gave me a real passion to want to help people work through religious trauma.
Krispin: Hmm. Yeah. That's so cool. I'm so, yeah. So glad that you're here. Glad to hear a little bit of your history. Um, what's your history with DC talk?
Mark: Ah, well, when I became a Christian, I was taught that heavy metal music was of the devil. And this may sound strange to some, but I also was taught, and I remember very, I'll never forget this memory of being taught, there was a visiting prominent preacher in our denomination and we were having a one-on-one. And I was excited, you know, I was into music and, and he told me that, If I didn't use my music solely for God, then I was playing for Satan. And on top of. Like that was weird cuz like I was, at the time, I remember playing like for, uh, nursing homes or playing some covers. To him was like a sin if it wasn't done in the church, for the church. So between me having a heavy metal background and the, you know, the teaching around, Hey, don't listen to heavy metal music. I knew that DC talk existed. I remember that song very specifically,
Mark: I also had this sense, any Christian music I always felt was a cheap knockoff because I was immersed with, you know, Megadeath and Panera and Metallica and corn, and I'm like, there's something that feels more real and raw about than like Christians.
I was like, “eh, If I'm gonna sneak listening to music, I'm gonna choose Pantera,”
Krispin: yeah, I'm really excited to talk about, uh, in the light today with you. But before we start, you, uh, used this term in your book, religious shame, which I think it's gonna ground some of our conversation. Um, but yeah, if you could give a quick kind of definition of why you use that term and what it means?
Mark: Sure. If I can go back just a little bit to kind of define religious trauma
Krispin: Mm.
Mark: You know, there's been great people, you know, academics, religious trauma practitioners. Who are trying to get sort of a definition so it can be experienced as something really important in the academic community.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: this in in the literature and understand this is a real phenomenon, but for me it, describes religious trauma that describes the harmful effects that I've endured caused by what I would call adverse religious experiences, and I believe that's from Brian Peck's work such as suffocating beliefs, suppressive behaviors, constricting rules and confining structures.
So this religious trauma had negative effects on my nervous system, emotions, view of self, others in relationships. And that, you know, it's just stuff that my nervous system has not been able to fully deal with, resolve and work through. That's a, so, you know, it's good to distinguish adverse religious experiences.
Not everyone who has like harmful church experiences necessarily has religious trauma, but those who have religious trauma, it's certainly have had adverse religious experiences. So when we get to shame, You know, although most researchers differentiate between guilt and shame…
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: and surprisingly no consensus concerning their exact definitions, so just to differentiate guilt as commonly understood as an aversive experience. That individuals feel after they perceive they've done something wrong. So it's a focus on behavior and the negative implications of that behavior. And there could be with, with guilt the idea healthy guilt. It's not about feeling anything cuz those who feel nothing are either dead or sociopath.
So it, it's okay to feel a cognitive emotional experience that's aversive when we harm people that we love or do something that's not according to our values. But shame on the other hand, it’s a focus almost exclusively on the self. So toxic shame causes individuals to believe that they are something wrong or that they're flawed, inferior, or tainted in some way. So given that background, I define religious shame as an intense and lasting neurobiological imprint that was formed in a religious context that perpetually affects a person's core identity, ie., worthlessness, unlovability and decreases their overall quality of life. Religious shame is formed with within a religious context, or at the very least coming in the repeated contact with aversive religious beliefs, behaviors, and constricting religious boxes. So just, if I may give some examples that may like. This, these are things I think of that can, I always think of like a syringe of like the church pumping people full of shame in that way. But for some, when a pastor harshly warned them of a powerful God, both throw them in a pit of hell, to suffer eternal conscious torment because their sin, they may perpetuated feelings of religious guilt and shame. When people were excluded from religious roles because they were divorced, they fused people with religious shame. When parents admonished their children don't do that, God is watching and doesn't like disobedience. That can inflict religious guilt and shame on them. When youth pastors use the Bible to condemn and harshly judge those working through. Integrating their sexuality. They inject them with poisonous religious guilt and shame. So shame can be very, very toxic to the point of some people having so much shame that they kill themselves, this is not a good thing. The church should not be an institution that is pumping people full of shame.
Krispin: Yeah, no, that's, I think that's so important. And, and I think we talk, you know, Brene Brown and being so popular, we talk a lot about shame, but I'm so glad to be able to talk about what that looks like in the church. And you said this neurobiological imprint, um, I think was the phrase you used. Yeah. So this idea of likebBeing in this environment, and especially probably growing up in it, but I don't think it's limited to that… it shapes your brain in a way that it goes to shame quicker or it lives there like, right?
Mark: [00:12:00] well said. Yeah. I mean, we're talking, it's, it's sort of embedded in their DNA that now that they have these glasses that with a darker tint that they're looking at themselves and other people in the world around them. So this is something that's now deeper in their subcortical nervous system and not just sort of something that's, you know, once in a while they deal with,
Krispin: Yeah, right. And that's, uh, why I wanted to, thinking about the song, I wanted to talk to you because the theme throughout the song is - it's not I'm doing something wrong, but there's something about me inherently [that’s wrong]. We'll get there in a minute. I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but the phrase that comes to mind is the “disease of self,” right? Like there's just, like something, yeah. There's something about me, myself that is, that is broken and disgusting and, um, yeah. And so, but we'll start with, uh, the beginning of the song.
Mark: Well, first, a little caveat before we, um, embark on our deconstruction journey of deconstructing this song, one part of me wants to be gracious because music is, and now I'm saying this as a musician. You know, it's typically coming from the heart and not meant to be a logical and coherent theological masterpiece. So this is why I appreciate, you know, many of the Psalms, uh, while they may not always be theologically pristine, there's something human and raw about them.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: However, thinking carefully about what we sing. What gets repeated in our minds and that inform our actions and in attitudes is important.
Krispin: Uhhuh, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. And I'm thinking a, a couple of years ago I did a whole season on Christian Hardcore, and it was called Shame Corps Records because it was all this shame stuff. But what I kind of came to the conclusion of that these are like teenagers and people in their early twenties, they're not like creating this theology.
Like it's not the musicians that are creating it, they're like processing or creating art out of what the, what already exists in this broader community. So I think that's like another way to look at it too, is like, it's not like Charlie Peacock who wrote the song, woke up and was like, “I'm gonna really come up with a new theology here.” Right? It's he's just kind of putting to music something that's already in the air or in the water.
Mark: You're right. And, and there's also another piece, so it could be, it's already in the air. It's embedded within the community, these implicit explicit messages. And I also think there's an interesting phenomenological experience of like when we do something that's we know is not in line with our values, Or that God would be upset or mad about.
There is this internal wild kaleidoscopic experience [00:15:00] that people try to put to, to music, it just comes out really messy. But like I said, we, we need to think about what we're singing, in churches. We need to think about, well, what is this worship song actually conveying? I think it's so important. On that note, let's tear this thing up, man.
Krispin: Okay. All right!
Mark: Oh, so the only thing I can think of, so going back to, I, “I keep trying to find a life on my own, apart from you.”
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: The messages that I hear is, is that it sets up potentially, like some people can hear that, “Hey, no problem.” But maybe the sensitive temperament that really takes these things to heart, like when they hear something, they believe it. Some can listen to a thousand sermons have somewhere in there that God's gonna send people hell. “Yeah. Okay. That's great. No problem. You know,”
Krispin: Right. Yeah.
Mark: but many people do and I hope there's gonna be studies of attachment styles and religious trauma, like what makes one predisposed to experience these things? So aversive to the point of religious trauma. So Krispin, I hope you do that research in the future.
Krispin: Yeah. No, it's totally, that's what I thought is like, yeah. If, if it is impacting a, a portion of the congregation this way, we need to be really aware, you know? Um, yeah. So, so yeah. For some people they can hear this, but,
Mark: yeah. So some people could be fine, but I think for me, it potentially can set up two opposing sides -- one implicitly bad and one good.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So God is good, but my trying to figure out a life apart from God and ultimately me and my inclinations and my path in myself is not okay.
So again, God is good, I'm not. And my life and is not a far stretch. To say myself is bad.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: That's where I think it could set some people up for. Um, yeah. Some negative consequences.
Krispin: Right. Yeah. I'm curious about from a developmental standpoint, I don't know if this feels like it's outside of your scope or not, but I'm thinking about especially teenagers hearing this, right. At this time where you're, you're trying to figure out your life right? I wonder how you see that impacting people.
Mark: [00:18:00] Sure. Well, okay. So potentially the psychological impact of seeing and believing these lyrics. “I keep trying to find a life on my own, apart from you” and, and the whole song. now it can vary, of course. Um, so I think first the lyrics can reinforce a negative view of self.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: people may believe they're deficient and bad and they cannot do anything good without God. So what can this lead to? I think a lack of confidence, a lack of self-esteem or steaming esteeming, the, the self as as good in any way. So in that impact, impacting the overall wellbeing, cuz low, uh, shame-based views of self doesn't do anyone any good. Right, so, so to reinforce a negative view of self where I shouldn't have any confidence in me, my inclinations, my intuitions, that I think is related to my other point here is that it can lead to internal confusion [00:19:00]. It may struggle to understand what it means to live life, this can cause anxiety and rumination as they try to find the one true life. That's what I was taught, like this gets into the will of God: there could be a thousand choices and you're trying to find the one will of God or all else will fall apart. That's, that's very difficult and very confusing, especially when. Typically God doesn't speak audibly. And two, the Bible doesn't necessarily flesh out specifically what choices we should make in the specifics of our life. So again, fueling anxiety, fueling distrust in self confusion. I don't see how any of that is necessarily positive.
Krispin: Right. Yeah. Which fits into this like next piece where he says, “tell me what's going on inside of me, I despise my own behavior.” [00:20:00] Right? So there's this confusion, which we've touched on a little bit. And then he says, “this only serves to confirm my suspicions that I'm still in a man in need of a savior.” so as I heard this, the kind of reasoning I heard is like, “I hate my own actions, therefore, it confirms that I need God to change me.” And it reinforces that like low view of self, negative view of self. I, I hear a self-perpetuating cycle here in a way. But I wonder what you would say, like, you know, if, if someone in your office said this? You know, like “I keep on doing the things I don't want to do and that just is further proof that I'm just messed up and I just need God to change me.” [00:21:00]
Mark: Yeah, so let me, let me address the self-perpetuating cycle and how I would see this coming into the office. You know, a caveat that some people, you know, what's complicated about this is I do believe in a healthy spirituality, right? There's a healthy points of self-reflection. And how is my life?
How am I living my life in a way that's true to who I am? or if you believe in God, and spirituality in that sense, you know, it can't be a bad thing to say, is what I'm doing in line with, with love.
Krispin: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mark: …with a God who is loved. So, but you know, I think it has this self-perpetuating cycle in this sense that as Christians, we thought we were lovingly being taken care of by the church, which addressed what we were told was a [00:22:00] sin sickness. So one breath, we were told how God loves us, in the next we're told our right, is like filthy menstrual rags that we're told that no one is good. There's nothing good within us, that our hearts are deceitfully wicked, that we could do nothing except through Christ. They're told our desires are sinful, that we couldn't trust our minds and our intuitions, but only the biblical text. Or what was found in our pastor's favorite interpretation of the biblical text. Maybe to be more specific. So we we're told really that the creator of the universe despises us a, as we are who we are, that our bodies are corrupt, our emotions are deceptive, that the spiritual things are more important than anything else. And that even alluding to that, we're evil dead in our trespasses, you know, it just goes on and on and on.
Krispin: Aha.
Mark: there is what I consider this paradoxical and diabolical [00:23:00] conundrum that some churches can teach us about our shame infested sin sickness only to provide medications of sermons and Bible studies and songs that offer this yummy taste of how loved we are. But while in the middle of this medication is a subtle, bitter taste reminding us of how terrible we are. So this is a cycle for me where it perpetuates, it offers a cure, but instills the problem in the toxicity of the poison. It's this weird thing, like the more they tell us how bad we are, the more we think we need the church. And we go to the church, the more they're telling us how bad we are. And so that's where I see this sick cycle in, in effect. So that's the one piece of, there is this odd, paradoxical, toxic self-perpetuating cycle,
Krispin: Yeah, totally. Mm-hmm.
Mark: And so this is the, [00:24:00] you know, original sin in how they, maybe a fear a punitive OCD-ish kind of god who can't stand in perfections.
Krispin: Danielle and I have talked about this a lot, um, that the message on the surface is a good message. You are loved. But there's always this little nugget of like, and also you don't deserve to be loved. And that doesn't actually change view of self. It doesn't like help us feel more secure. Um, and so I love the, the poison metaphor, like I think that is a perfect metaphor. It's like, it seems good, but there's like poison in it that just keeps eating away at that. Yeah. So, um, The disease of self runs through my blood. It's a cancer fatal to my soul. Every attempt on my behalf has failed to bring the sickness under control. [00:25:00]
Um, what do you see? What happens when we try to cure ourselves of self?
Mark: and even the question, there's something even wrong with the que, like, it's like you could tell something's amiss here.
Krispin: Yes.
Mark: yeah. So again, not everyone's affected by these ideas in the same way. However, like I said, those beautifully sensitive, big hearted, deeply sincere people, we take these ideas seriously.
But you know, here the repeated message is the self is bad. The self is sick, the self is incom incompetent, the self is cancerous. Um, and how can that not affect our, our, our view of self? Like how in the world can pumping that in our minds of children and adults, [00:26:00] you know, how could it not have overwhelming negative effects?
You know, just the other day, this is a true story. This was actually, a few days ago, I looked at my six-year-old, and I feel emotional remembering this, but I, I told him, I looked at him and with a slow and soft voice, and I said, Alex, I love you. You are good, your heart is good, and I believe in you. And I teared up. I'm tearing up now. I teared up after saying that, and of course he looked me. I like, I was very strange, but I teared up because I remember experiencing the opposite from the church. And to be fair, the opposite of my own father.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: And I often wonder what people's life trajectories would be if they were constantly reminded of who they were instead of who they were not.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So [00:27:00] for me, this result of self is bad narratives, creates a negative view of self, a negative view of others, and out of self perception comes our actions. So out of the abundance of the heart, our actions speak, if you will.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So people don't realize if they tell people they're primarily sinners, evil, no good dwells within them, and they literally could do nothing without God holding their hands. They can walk with a stunted self who could be prone to kind of living out what they believe about themselves, infusing them with shame and incompetency, paradoxically propelling them to engage in unhealthy behaviors. I think it's a real thing. It, it matters. And on aside, I mean, we have to come up with our own narrative of what our view of self is. It's very important. I personally, you know, I, I've worked through this. I don't think humans are all good. I don't [00:28:00] think we're all bad when it comes to our nature. I think we defy these binary and rigid categories, and so what does that mean? We can be violent, selfish, judgmental, and apathetic, just like animals in the wild. But I also think we can be sacrificial, loving, courageous. Creative and which can also be said about animals by the way, which is interesting. But we do, however, seem to have more awareness than other species. A meta awareness that can transcend our primitive instincts and connect with a greater whole. So that's, you know, wherever we land, it's important to flesh out. Okay, well if I don't believe this, I'm all about people owning their narratives. You know, we've been given narratives for too long. Being I think of like being tethered to the matrix and being pumped with this fluid of thoughts and beliefs about self, God, others, the world. And
Krispin: Yeah.
Mark: one of the journey of healing from religious trauma is figuring out who [00:29:00] we are, and what our values are, the narratives that have been so toxic in our lives.
Krispin: When you think about someone with this, um, negative view of self with religious shame, I know it varies wildly. If you're to kind of step into someone's shoes for a day, what might you see or out outwardly or inwardly.
Mark: Well, listen, I was so guilt and shame ridden. I had the confidence of a size of a pinhead. I was so filled with guilt and shame. I thought that. So I would walk around the, the phenomenology of it, the lived experience. So there's a heaviness. There's um, there's this sort of, uh, like I think of clogged arteries.
Like there's this calcification of the stuff and my arteries that didn't allow me to live with the freedom and the fuel of life and vitality. So really this, this, this [00:30:00] collapsing inwardness. It's also a very harsh, negative view of self and others because the world is not safe, others are not safe. I'm not safe.
So it's this sort of, can have this sense of hypervigilance, of safety and, and, um, in the sense of, Yeah, being nervous and scared and, and just me being with people, you know, will they like me? Will they not? Like will I be judged? Will I be rejected? I have, I'm a very inquisitive person. Will, you know, when I go to church environments, there was a collapsing, there was a, you get into the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and then some people are putting fawning in there as a way to sort of appease. Yeah, so I, I remember being in all those states, you know, collapsing, being nervous, who, who's gonna find me out that, you know, I remember going to a picnic and there was a, a, a [00:31:00]guy there, it was a church picnics in the United Pentecostal Church, and we just had a conversation and he told me that he was kicked out of the church for masturbating. And I remember being filled with terror cuz like, “I'm not gonna tell you right now, but I'm scared shitless.”
Krispin: Uh huh.
Mark: you know, I was a guy and I did, uh, masturbate,
Krispin: No judgment here.
Mark: So, gosh, I was terrified.
Krispin: Uhhuh.
Mark: so between shame and fear that I thought something was, Definitely wrong with me is somebody who, like, if I was truly in with God and connected with God and filled with the Holy Spirit, I shouldn’t be be doing this masturbation stuff.
Krispin: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mark: So, it's like little things like that. I remember even I thought if I drink soda, I would be defiling the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Krispin: [00:32:00] Mm-hmm.
Mark: So yeah, that's what I think.
Krispin: Yeah. As you were talking, I love that image of the clogged arteries and it made me think about, I mean, I love it all, but it made me think about like different nervous system states like you were talking about. Right? And so, yeah, I can see like, you know, some of us go into that fight or flight, anxious state. Some of us freeze and shut down. Um, but it really does impact our nervous system in how we feel and how we go through the world. Yeah.
Mark: Listen, Krispin is so important because there are many religious leaders and Christians who are like, what's up with this? Like religious trauma stuff, like all these wimps and woos and you know, spoiled and entitled generations, you know, they just want to be victims. I'm like, Uh, part of me, I just heard in my mind, like, “F you,” but I wanna be kind.
[00:33:00] I vacillate between compassion and anger, but there's a righteous anger that comes up that says, listen to people.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: This is real. Religious trauma is real. There's research studies that, that have qualitative literature that are exploring people's lived experiences that flush this stuff out in detail. It's not to be side stepped and skewed and, and pushed away. This is real stuff. People are hurting and listen. Talk about shame. There are people because they. They are gay, or in this case were gay. And because of their understanding of who the church thought they were and the narrative that who they thought God was, I just freaking saw a video of some guy holding a sign. God hates, you know. And I'm like, people have died because of this. [00:34:00] This is not a joking matter. This is not to be taken lightly. People have received the messages of the church and have killed themselves because of it.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So if I get passionate about this, you know, there's good reason for it.
And I don't apologize for my, my thrust of getting this knowledge out there.
Krispin: Right. Yeah. It's so important. And, um, yeah, and, and I, I mean, just along those lines, I just want to add that, uh, I think so many of us are indebted to queer folks in the queer community to speak about, um, the, the shame in the church, cuz I think, uh, so many of us experience it and I feel like a lot of, uh, people in the LGBTQIA+ plus community. They were some of the first to talk about it, um, and how harmful it is. Um, and I feel like the rest of us are following and, and benefiting. That's, that's my perspective
Mark: that's a great point.
Krispin: Yeah, so we get to the chorus. “I want to be in the light as you are in the light.” And you just talked a little bit about that with masturbating, right? Like this idea of like, “if I'm, if I'm doing this behavior, if I'm masturbating or drinking soda, right? I'm not in the light.” So yeah, I want to talk a again about, you know, for some folks they could, they could hear this course and it's a helpful thing, but I'm thinking about for those of us that, um, like I have, I have some religious OCD and so for me, hearing this song as a teenager, it's like, “am I in the light?” Like, “am I doing it right? Like, gotta like [00:36:00] check all the things right? And I don't think you have, I don't think you even have to have religious OCD to be an evangelical teenager and feel a lot of anxiety about whether or not you're in the light.
Mark: Indeed. I mean, as you know, it gets into the spectrum of scrupulosity to middle of the road, sort of, it could be intense anxiety to know no anxiety at all, but you know, like I said, you know, may, people may hear that and there's healthy forms of spirituality. So remember listeners.
We're not talking about the healthier forms of spirituality and those who are dancing and tiptoeing in the tulips for Jesus and seeing I'm in the light and I'm, we're not, you know what I'm
Krispin: Yeah, yeah. Right. Mm-hmm.
Mark: It's like, it's like those people “No, white people matter too.” So, yeah. Uh, I, so I think disciplined while being a term for some that connotes. [00:37:00] That can connote, you know, oppression and disgust. Like I said, there could be healthy forms of that, but the shadow side of anxiously trying to be in the light is the tendency for some of us to engage in. Well, I think a one spiritual bypassing.
Krispin: Hmm.
Mark: One issue that comes up for me is like desperately trying to be in the light can oftentimes be a defense mechanism to avoid the shadow or the darker aspects of our personalities. And I don't even like that we're darker because you know, for this case I find that it is not trying to be in the light that brings liberation, but oftentimes are entering into the darkness.
And for me, it is there in the darkness where there are oppressed, marginalized, and wonderfully wacky parts of us that are simply wanting to be heard, validated, and befriended. So this gets into internal family systems work. So you know, by [00:38:00] going into the light, we're avoiding those other parts of us that just wanna be heard.
That aren't, shouldn't be pathologized, shouldn't be oppressed and marginalized, but maybe have taken the postures that have they have taken because of trauma.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Or maybe, you know, whether it's masturbation or, or any other thing, there's why should I demonize a part of me that, that's a natural part of who I am as a sexual human being in the world now? I mean, that's a loaded conversation.
Krispin: Well, right. I think there's that, right? Yeah. There's that piece of like, you know, I think there's, that in your head is like, oh, are you just saying people should do whatever they want? Right. But I, I, but I, I think, you know, I, I, I keep on think, maybe it's because I listened to this song once I, when I was a teenager, but also like we were talking in the series about, like this, this was an album for teenagers.
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Krispin: so I think about when you talk about that spiritual bypassing and just trying to be on this really straight path right, like there are all these behaviors, um, and feelings and thoughts that come up as a teenager and like throughout the rest of our life that really, like, they mean important things, right? They like, and, and we need to. So important to be able to explore, to understand, to figure out like, all right, what, what is, what's going on inside of me? Which is one of the song lyrics, right?
Mark: going into those, you know, unexplored terrain within ourselves as opposed to going to something out there. Into the light. and then again, it, you know, for me, the problem that it could set up is, again, self is bad and only God is good. And if we're trying to be in the light, that means we are in darkness or worse, we [00:40:00] are darkness.
And I think that he sets up an unfortunate consequence of unhelpful binaries. But you okay, going back to the team thing, I mean, suppression is not good. It does nobody good. So getting out of sexuality, I mean even dress or bringing it back to music. Like, was it a good thing for me to feel so much guilt and attached to shame as well of wanting to, a part of me wanting to express myself musically with a harder edge, which I felt that I couldn't do.
That, that wasn't the light that was marked, that's darkness or even my appreciation of those forms of music. In other words, suppress the self, suppress the self, suppress the self, then feel neurotic, anxious, setting up a unhelpful binary. It's not healthy. It's not okay.
Krispin: Yeah.
Mark: And yeah, I, I feel for the many, [00:41:00] many hundreds of thousands of people… Healthy forms of spirituality should not promote a life that's not abundant, you know? Um, so for people to have more shame and more guilt and more fear and more anxiety to go to therapy because they were in contact with Christianity, there's something that doesn't add up, especially with. You know, a, a guy named Jesus who, his first message that he ever preached, he was like, “yeah, you wanna know why the Spirit's upon me? So I can bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives. To set the oppress free, right to, you know, release chains and the oppress,” like this is what this guy was about. And for it to have the opposite effects, something is amiss, and this is what we're exploring.
Krispin: Yeah, totally. [00:42:00] I have a couple of questions left. One is we often think of, so we often think of trauma as related to episodic memories, or are we experiencing things? So in the sense of like, You know, I got triggered going back to church, or it reminded me of these things, um, you know, feeling shame for masturbating. But I wonder, um, in your work with folks, what are ways that you see more constant impact of religious trauma beyond just like specific, like, uncomfortable memories? How has it, you know, impact a person's like view of self?
Mark: Totally. Yeah. I think entrenched core shame is also friends with unhealthy self-criticism. for, in other words, for people to walk around and to have this sort of, um, record player in their mind as Russ Harris I think talks about sort of [00:43:00] “doom and gloom radio.” Like to think they get out thoughts of, “I feel tainted, I deserve to be alone. I feel horrible about my self or people don't want me. God doesn't even want me. I deserve to go to hell, uh, or God hates me for being gay. I don't want to burn in hell.” Or “God loves everyone else but me or I can't trust my core self because it is wicked.” Um, “I am unloved. God is mad at me. I, I'm, or I'm terrible for deconstructing my faith.”
“I'm so nervous that it will, I'll bring my family along on the road to destruction.” In other words, now we're getting in the realm of our thought life. And how the inner critic can morph in this very harsh, negative inner critic that has this religious sort of, um, yeah, enveloped in this religious garb.
Krispin: Hmm.
Mark: And that is not healthy. I mean, to walk around with that record player and that, that radio station playing in your mind, you know, [00:44:00] it's just gonna affect how you are in the world, how you relate to yourself to other people. It will affect your relationships. It could affect jobs. Uh, you know, someone walking around with low self-esteem and low view of self and low self-confidence. You know, it's just gonna affect every domain of their life, to be so negative here, but it's, it's just,
Krispin: No, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I think this is really an invitation for folks listening to notice, you know, everyone has that inner critic, everyone has those thoughts. Uh, and I don't want to say like the doom and gloom is normal. I think everyone has that inner critic, but to, to, I think there's something about religious trauma that, um, even makes it harder to recognize, whereas.
Some folks might be able to say like, oh yeah, that's my inner critic. Like that's, you know, like I, I, you know, I try to take it with a grain of salt, but when it is enmeshed with a [00:45:00] view of God or like for, I think a lot of folks like, well, when I say a lot of folks, I mean me. For me it was like, “oh, that's just the Holy Spirit's voice, right?” Then it makes it so much harder to heal and be a healthy human that can like, hear your inner critic and also like move on with life or like, you know, like hold it, you know, take it with a grain of salt, those sorts of things. Um, and it can also just be so, so oppressive and constant as well.
Mark: You're, you're so right. Now the inner critic, yeah. It's, that's a whole conversation. We all have one, but you're right. With the religious piece added onto it. Then it gets, it just amped up to another level and can become very confusing because a lot of people would, for example, this may not be many other people's experiences, but in the Pentecostal church that I was in, like you literally thought that Satan [00:46:00] was. That Satan. That's demons like to have a negative thought about yourself or don't do that, or
Krispin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark: Is Satan talking to me?
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: then on top of the confusion of, well maybe that's God,
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: if you don't do that, you're gonna burn in hell. I mean, so then, Yeah, people like, well, that could be an inner critic.
But no, that's probably the Holy Spirit talking to
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: And by the way, I remember doing a little study on, on the Holy Spirit and, and conviction. I remember the Greek word, it doesn't mean to make one feel bad, it literally means to bring to light. and, and in the sense of sort of a, a loving school teacher, Hey, let's look at what you just did. Um, you know, is this in line with who you really are, but then it can morph into toxic religion and
Krispin: Right. Yeah. Yeah,
Mark: So yeah,
Krispin: So, wrapping up, what, what are um, what are ways that people can heal from this sinful self theology?
Mark: Hmm. They can't, we're screwed…No, come on. I am a positive, hope-filled person. Actually, in my book, and this is important, I spend part, so part one is talking about the problem, and three is basically looking at how we can heal from religious trauma, particularly due to hell indoctrination, which is a diabolical trinity of a tormenting hell.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: so part two is me fleshing it out from a philosophical and sociological perspective to help wiggle, held beliefs from our minds. then part three is I spent [00:48:00] over 120 pages of helping people work through to heal from religious trauma.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So me, whether it's memory consolidation work, I know that's gonna be like, what the hell is Mark talking about?
Krispin: No talk about it, cuz I think you might just like peak people's interest. Of course you can't explain, you know, here's the whole healing process. But if you can talk about like, what are some of the, you know, kind of ideas that you delve into or like touch on them. It might peak people's curiosity.
Mark: Totally. So let me just put it in, in regular layman terms here. So with, with religious trauma, we're talking about traumatic memories, you know, and these are experiences that we had, like I said, with religious propositions or practices or constricting boxes that had a negative effect on ourselves, view of self, view of others.
So what we learned is that we can actually go back in [00:49:00] time and. There is sort of this neuroscience based process where a past memory, where we actually get these negative feelings about ourselves from, right? That's where it's coming from. We can have the memory become in a labile state where it can be open to being updated and revised. It's really weird stuff. I remember the, the movie “Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind,” which Jim Carrey loved that movie. Not going to that extreme, but there's a sense in which we can update and revise memories that can reduce and diminish and sometimes even eradicate the negative emotional val around these memories. So, for example, um, I spend a whole chapter on using the imagination.
Krispin: Hmm.
Mark: As a way to promote healing. So that may look like, let's say we had a harsh experience, or we remember a time where we were in church. And we watched a very traumatic play with Satan and our, you know, [00:50:00] eternal destiny was on the line, and severe terror. We can literally take some time to bring up whether it's a positive, uh, nurturing figure, protective figure to go back in time, uh, with somebody who feels really important or powerful or potent and. And bring some TLC to that particular memory so that we can have. We can trigger both the past memory and have a new corrective emotional experience juxtapose at the same time, which then can bring some deeper level of, of healing to our,
Krispin: Hmm.
Mark: So use, you know, in other words, it's our imaginations, which can bring so much harm, but we're tapping into sort of Neurohacking in a way to bring. Some health and healing to those, uh, wounded parts of ourselves. So that's one way I spend a whole chapter on self-compassion.
Krispin: Hmm.
Mark: Self-compassion has changed my life. [00:51:00] So I go into the research around self-compassion. Practical ways to bring the research into our lives, um, to have self-compassion breaks to whether it's that or talking to ourselves in a more compassionate way. To me, it's subversive. You know, so much of the church in that portrayed view of God was, you're no good.
You're not loved, you're rejected. You are so worthless as you might as well be like a ragdoll to be thrown in the fire. The only good that you have is if, if God was to look through the prism of Jesus, but nothing about you is good.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So what would it be like to say f you? And self-compassion is a form of eff youness a way to know, instead of hating myself, how can I in this moment love myself? Into the different forms of self-compassion. Sometimes there's the [00:52:00] nurturing, um, you know, that's embodiment of warmth and care. Just putting a hand on your heart in a moment when your religious trauma is triggered, and just to be able to say to you yourself. May I acknowledge this as a moment of suffering? May I know that there are myriads of people struggling with the same religious trauma, and may I know that I will get through this. You know, just something simple as that. Hand in the heart may be releasing some oxytocin topping into the inner drug drugstore taking care of yourself in a way. And then there's that sort of, I believe, the yang of self-compassion. This is in Kristen Neff's work where, “No. Listen, mom, dad, I, I know you care about me, but if we are gonna engage with each other, I cannot have you bring up religion anymore. Have you bring up how, the fact that I'm sinning and I'm going to hell. So if you're [00:53:00] going to do that, I'm sorry I have to distance myself a little bit.” That is a form of self-compassion. That's firm, that's strong -- seeing some level of suffering in your life and saying “hell to the no” and doing something different. So self-compassion work and her critical work. And so all kinds of stuff.
Krispin: Yeah. I'm so glad that you did a little overview and just really helpful to know that there's a resource out there, especially cuz it's, it's hard for people to find, uh, therapists that know about religious trauma. And so I'm, I'm all about being able to get people resources. Um, so I'm, I'm so excited, so glad to be able to, that you just put this book out into the world.
Mark: And, on that note, you reminded me what's so important in religious trauma work is that it's trauma. And I say it this way, facts cannot heal the tracks, and information does not necessitate transformation. This isn't [00:54:00] something people can just think their way out of if it's truly religious trauma.
You know, I just want to encourage folks if they have religious trauma, find a therapist who, it's not just talk therapy per se, but gets into the body, gets into the nervous system, is talking and processing feelings and emotions and, uh, it's gonna be so important to be able to heal from what's really considered religious trauma.
Krispin: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, mark. I so appreciate you giving your time this morning. Um, so appreciate you putting your effort and energy into this book. Um, so many of people that listen to our podcast are like your target audience, so, um, I'll just say on behalf of all of us, thank you so much for contributing to, uh, the field of religious trauma and healing from it.
Mark: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And uh, yeah, wishing you well.
Krispin: Thanks. [00:55:00]
