Deconstructing your religious upbringing can be a wild ride.
Sometimes it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you, and in the middle of that sometimes you feel relieved, scared, mad, anxious, and lost. For each of us there is something that drew us to leave, most often it was the desire to love more freely, to see people treated better, to care more deeply for the world and for people.
I, like many, went through a phase of feeling very angry, and bitter about all the harm that was done to me from growing up in these environments. Everything from being told that God was judging my every thought, to the devil and demons waiting for any chance to drag me away from god and my family.
But something shifted in me after a while of processing and therapy. I began to look for who I wanted to be now. I felt myself stuck in relationship patterns that made me feel shame similar to what I had felt in the church. What was going on?
I realized that although I had left the church and had processed my grief in many ways, I still felt like I was missing something.
I needed a shift, and that’s when I decided to focus on my relationship with myself. I realized that my earliest memories taught me to dominate my instincts, my needs, my wants. Not being able to hear myself, I looked to others to see if I was doing things correctly, feeling correctly, responding correctly, choosing correctly.
Inside the closed system of religion I made this work, and when I left, I found other people and thought leaders who took that place, but there was an anxiousness to it. Worrying that I might get it “wrong.” I might make the “wrong” choices for my life.
Through the past four years I have been intently focusing on my relationship with myself, and have noticed that, although it sounds like it’s just about me, this absolutely had to be done in other relationships in order for it to change my old religious patterns.
Maybe you find yourself like I did
Searching for one thing and then another to bring the healing you're looking for.
In a pattern of trying really hard to be a better mom/partner/friend/worker/person/advocate etc, and then when you mess up you shame spiral and feel awful and then recommit to doing better...and then it all happens all over again.
Setting boundaries by creating distance in the relationship, which works, but you struggle to navigate boundaries with those you want to keep relationship with. Like how do I say I can't make it to the baby shower because it's too much for me, even though I love the person it's for?
Missing community and unsure how to approach building it in a healthy way
Wanting your life to feel deeply meaningful, but all the self care and self help sh*t you’ve tried feels like putting a bandaid on a bruise.
You know you want something deeper.
From the past four years of personal Self-Relationship coaching and ongoing coaching trainings, I have put together a 1:1 coaching series to support you to lay the foundations to grow your relationship with yourself from a new place. New ways of relating and being that accept your whole humanity and support you to feel good in who you are, right now, as a beautiful human navigating the experience of life. You are the only one who gets to feel what it’s like to be you, doing what you do right?
In Self-Relationship you
learn to practice acceptance of what you feel, and what you notice about your life, and needs as you notice them - so that you can show up in spaces with other people and express yourself with confidence.
learn to listen and care for all parts of yourself, and see them as valid - so in the quieter moments you have the courage to reach out for support and give support to yourself even when it feels vulnerable.
learn to see yourself as equal to all beings and learn how to trust yourself to know what you think, feel and want. - So you can hold loving boundaries within relationships that matter deeply to you.
In spite of all the times I tried to distract myself with what I thought would be quicker fixes throughout this process, this is what really brought healing.
I’ve said it so many times in interviews I’ve lost count:
the things that really heal us are slow and simple.
Our internal systems - especially those of us who have religious trauma or childhood trauma - will leap towards something that promises to be the answer, to solve something quickly, to fully heal you. - or in the reverse we will resist any and all advice or guidance from anyone else, cutting us off from healing in a different way.
That, my love, is another form of seeking a savior (or proving we don't need anyone, savior included, if we are in the resisting category). We were brought up being told the answer was outside of us, in the directions that others give, in their shiny promises.
Healing is in the slow, daily practice of remembering that you are - and always have been - enough as you are. Flaws, trauma, and all. Not a better version of you, not even a future version of you. But you, right now.
Pro tip: If you find yourself thinking about something and it's either this or that - I'm either good or bad, wrong or right - Try practicing asking yourself "Is there a third option?" because more often than not, the wisdom is in the in between.
So how can you choose yourself at this moment? What would it feel like to trust yourself? To learn how to relate to yourself and everyone else from a place of centeredness?
This is absolutely something you can pursue on your own.
However, the most powerful element for me was being seen and supported through this process. Receiving and implementing tools, perspectives, and having people lovingly mirror back to me who I am.
Want to join me? I’d be thrilled.
Xo
Christina
