A Liminal Space

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on staying present with ourselves as religious trauma survivors. In Part 1, we explored the roundabout—why religious trauma keeps us circling in patterns we can’t seem to escape. Today, we’re looking at what we were actually taught about ourselves, and why that makes staying present so difficult.

In Part 1, I wrote about the roundabout—that dizzying pattern where we keep circling, searching for the exit marked “worthy” but never finding it.

The roundabout taught me something crucial: I was searching for an exit that looked like worthiness, like being good enough. But toxic religion had designed the roundabout itself—a system where the exit could never appear.

Which brings me to worm theology.

The Fine Line Between Healthy and Toxic Religion

I’m realizing there is a fine line between healthy and toxic religion. This fine line, I am seeing these days, is the belief religion teaches a person about themselves.

Worm theology is a Christian theological position emphasizing the depravity of humanity in comparison to God’s power. The name comes from a line in the Isaac Watts hymn “Alas! and Did My Saviour Bleed” (published 1707) which says “Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”

This theology teaches that we are only worms crawling on the ground if we do not believe and follow certain doctrines. This is way more destructive than I ever imagined. And on a side note, it can also justify all kinds of ways we judge and harm others. If a person is just a worm when they don’t believe like we do, then it becomes easy to justify squashing them beneath our feet.

When you’ve been taught you’re a worm, how do you learn to be present with yourself? How do you sit with what you find inside when you’ve been told that everything in there is inherently corrupted, sinful, untrustworthy?

You can’t.

Instead, you keep circling the roundabout, hoping that this time—maybe this time—you’ll finally be good enough.

How Environment Shapes Who We Are

Recently I read an article from the BBC about how environment shapes who we are. The research is fascinating: “It’s that combination of nature and nurture that makes us who we are and contributes to our beliefs and our cultures. And so we couldn’t have that same combination in another place…The science shows that while IQ is on average over 50% heritable, personality traits are roughly 40% heritable—which means they’re more influenced by environment than genetics. (This doesn’t mean 40% of one person’s extroversion is down to their genes, but rather that 40% of the differences in extroversion among a population as a whole can be explained by genetics.)”

The rest?

Environment.

As an adopted child who grew up in a family that wasn’t my biological one, this article is a lot of food for thought for me.

What Adoption Taught Me About Environment

Growing up, I always knew I was adopted, and this meant I was always wondering about where I really came from. I think this knowledge actually caused me to question my environment more when I was younger. Because the home I grew up in wasn’t healthy, it caused me to question even more what my life would have been like if I’d grown up somewhere else.

It turns out that my dreams and desires later in life revealed a lot about where I came from. My travels a couple of years ago to Newfoundland gave me an understanding about myself that I never gained growing up in the US. Learning about where several generations of my biological mother’s family lived for hundreds of years was like finding missing pieces of my life I’d always been looking for.

It helped me to see how much of myself was lost growing up in a home where I was expected to behave in a certain way in order to survive.

I’ve realized that my adoption story gives me clarity that others might not have about how environment really impacts a person’s personality.

Learning to Appease to Survive

Because I was in an unhealthy and abusive environment growing up, I had learned the skill of appeasement very well. But appeasing to survive hadn’t served me well in my family. Because nothing could appease my adopted father. Inevitably something would upset him and cause him to explode no matter how careful I was.

But the church? The church rewarded me for my appeasement. For following the rules. For believing like everyone else.

I was saved and loved by God when I did these things. I was validated by others by believing that I was a worm without Jesus.

When Our Identity Is In Something

I’ve been learning from Dr. K (Healthy GamerGG) recently about how we change and adapt who we are because of environment and experiences. He says that whenever our identity is in something, we get defensive or appease.

This hit me like a ton of bricks.

My decision to join the evangelical church when I was 19 goes on to further reveal how environment shapes our personality. I brought my well-practiced appeasement skills with me. And the church gave me an identity: “sinner saved by grace.”

It sounds positive, doesn’t it? But it hooks you into needing constant redemption. You’re always circling back to your unworthiness, always needing to be saved again, always proving you believe the right things.

And when that identity is questioned? You get defensive. Or you appease harder.

The Jesus I Related To

The story of Jesus drew me in because I related so much to his life of living in a place he didn’t come from. His pushback on systems that constantly tried to mold him into someone he wasn’t was something I related to deeply.

If you read the story of his life, it reveals so much pushback on aspects of the culture he grew up in—especially when it came to who fit in and who didn’t, as well as how religion operated. Jesus is an example of what it looks like to maintain our true self in culture.

But according to the Bible, Jesus is God. And maybe God is the only one who is able to pull this off? Because Jesus knew exactly where he came from. This is actually why he was able to push back.

Those of us who grew up in environments believing that appeasing others in our environment is what is expected of us don’t have this knowledge of coming from somewhere else. I knew I came from somewhere else, but for most of my life I didn’t know where, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where that was.

And when I actually discovered more about that place, it clicked with many of the places where my mind went to find comfort. Where my heart desired to be outside of my present circumstances.
Religion provided an explanation to me when I was 19 and started attending church regularly for the first time. Jesus was what drew me in because I related so much to his life.

But what I didn’t know was how the religious systems I was a part of were still doing the same things they were doing when Jesus walked on the planet as a human—trying to shape people into who they needed them to be in order to keep the system going.

The Question That Haunts Us

The question that comes to my mind these days is: How can I know what parts of me are shaped by my environment? And what parts of me are who I really am?

Looking at my own adoption story and what it reveals points to the answer that Dr. K gives in a recent video—and that’s spending time thinking about our desires each day.

The sad reality of this is if you are a part of certain religious institutions, this gets squashed. If you grow up like I did, you believe that your desires are wicked and that if you follow them you will fall in the ditch.

What I learned about this when I was abused by a pastor was it wasn’t my desires at all that were the problem. It was that my soul was starved of what it really needed in a system that was sucking me dry. The abuse was a result of maladaptive coping rather than pursuit of my true desires.

I realized this ten years after being abused when I started to understand more about where my DNA came from.

What I’m Trying to Say

So what am I trying to say?

Environment matters.

Who you are told you are supposed to be can shape who you become. Especially if you are not aware that it is happening.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend. We shared stories about how we struggle to feel a part of certain environments. Staying in our lane, being who others expect us to be doesn’t feel good.

But what makes it even more difficult is when we are in environments with others who are content just maintaining the status quo, molding and shaping themselves to the environment that they are in because this helps them to feel like they belong.

This feels like a lot of people who I meet, and I start to question myself—they seem content and I’m not content.
It’s interesting that my friend is a religious trauma survivor herself. She’s seen what I have about how the system will turn on you when you don’t play by its rules.

The belonging in these systems feels so real because in some ways it is real. You do belong when you agree. You are accepted when you agree. You are comfortable when you agree.

But when you don’t, you discover that most of these systems will choose the comfort of the system over protecting the individuals in the system.

Why?

Because many of these systems base belonging on conformity and not unity through diversity. Many of these systems are like any other broken system where appeasement to survive is happening.

And you can’t unsee what you see once you see it.

Control Burning

Me and my friend—we have both observed how systems will betray you if it comes down to protecting itself. It makes me think of control burning.

Land that has been burned won’t burn again.

We’ve learned.

But it can still feel so uncomfortable being around others who belong to each other for those reasons.

The story of Jesus reveals the uphill journey of being our true self in environments where people conform to survive.

An Invitation

So if you are feeling like maybe it’s you when you don’t feel like you belong, remember Jesus and dig deeper into who you truly are and take heart.

And those relationships with people who accept you for who you are, those environments where you can be yourself—these things are worth their weight in gold.

Don’t settle for less than what you deserve. To be true to yourself.

Life is short.

Make it count.

In every situation, big and small bring your unique essence.

Not welcome?

It’s ok to go somewhere it is.

In Part 3, we’ll explore the practice of staying present with ourselves—what it actually looks like to sit with what we find inside, and how “just noticing” changes everything.

Wrestling with who you are after religious trauma? You don’t have to figure this out alone. I offer affordable peer support for survivors navigating the journey from conformity to authenticity. If you’re asking “How do I know what parts of me are real?”—let’s explore that together. Reach out to loriwilliamslimnalspace@gmail.com.