Life can only be understood looking backwards, but it must be lived moving forward. — Attributed to Søren Kierkegaard

I recently finished the book Unlearn Your Pain by Howard Schubiner. I came across Dr. Schubiner doing an internet search, attempting to understand the chronic symptoms people I care about are continuing to suffer from. I really wasn’t looking for anything that would be specifically helpful for me, and it has been a pleasant surprise how helpful reading it has been.

I want to start by saying, as a survivor of religious abuse that included so much manipulation, it has been incredibly difficult to trust much of anything, and this has made me quite cynical and apathetic at times. Sometimes it’s been easier for me to look for answers for others than for myself.

But over the years since experiencing this abuse, I have continued to write about what I’ve been feeling to help myself cope and find relief, and I’ve also continued to read books and listen to podcasts in an effort to understand how to recover. The information and nuggets of truth I have found along the way have been the bread crumbs that have kept me moving forward, a step at a time.

Since 2014, when I exposed abuse in my then church home and place of employment, my understanding of life was completely shattered. The solid footing I once stood upon had completely given way and sent me down into the sinking sand and seemingly out into an ocean of endless waves, sometimes feeling sucked out by an overwhelming current and feeling like I wasn’t going to get out alive.

I had this experience on my last trip to the beach — a strong rip current overtook me and all of a sudden I was swimming and I wasn’t getting anywhere and I was becoming exhausted. What had started as a peaceful day had turned to terror. I saw my life flash before my eyes. My daughter, who had been further out, came alongside me, helped me calm down and stop fighting the waves. Together we were able to make our way back to the shore. On a side note — I’ll never view the ocean the same again. My favorite place in the world can also be deadly if we are not aware of the waves that can cause us to drown.

I didn’t realize when I was in the church that I was caught in a deadly current. I just believed that it was just the way life was — sometimes peaceful and drifting toward Jesus and my mansion in the heavens, but at other times almost drowning in what I believed at the time were my own “sinful” choices that I needed church leadership to save me from. But when someone I cared about was harmed and suffered greatly, and the solutions I was given didn’t bring lasting relief, it was then that things began to shatter, and the ways I had been being manipulated became all too clear.

Since that time I’ve been drifting out further into the ocean on my own, being careful not to grab hold of anything too tightly, but all the while learning to observe what is actually happening and to trust more what I’m actually seeing and feeling — to stop fighting the currents that threaten to pull me out and just allow the current to take me where it will until it finally ends, realizing that what we resist actually just persists. Because I’ve learned to do this more, I’m finding at times I’m doing more in my life than just surviving.

Just to be at peace is the most beautiful form of success.

Last night I watched the documentary All the Rage — Saved by Sarno. I wrote down a quote from the show: Just to be at peace is the most beautiful form of success. This is exactly what I’m talking about — those moments when we can actually float on the waves of life and actually soak up the sun. Dr. Sarno, who passed away several years ago, wrote several books that have helped many people experience relief from chronic pain. He is the person who also made a huge impact on Howard Schubiner, the author of Unlearn Your Pain — the book that I went reading, looking to find answers for others.

It struck me, reading this book now, how what we believe about our lives and our pain impacts how we live from day to day. And also how what we feel and how we cope with those feelings also impacts our quality of life. And after all the books about trauma and recovery I’ve read since 2014, this book seems to have landed for me in a very simple and practical way — that feels in some ways like a real life preserver, one that is actually inside myself, that I can grab hold of, that can keep me floating more than fighting.

We deserve to be heard. We aren’t bad people for saying it. It all has a purpose.

Why this book? I think it’s as simple and complex as this: he’s just encouraging people to look at what is actually happening and to process it in real time. Not to go back and get stuck in the past. Not to project all my hopes and dreams into what is to come. But to look at what’s actually happening inside of me now and give it a voice and let it just speak. We deserve to be heard. We aren’t bad people for saying it. It all has a purpose. Believing the actual truth of what we know is true is what matters and can make all the difference in how much we sink or swim.

Here’s the thing I think so many people — even therapists and doctors — don’t understand about those of us who are in recovery from religious/cult abuse or any kind of deep manipulation: how hard it actually is to believe anything others are telling you, especially those who have any kind of power over you. It’s hard to believe also in the hope that others are selling, because we spent so much time believing and investing in something that we wholeheartedly believed was hope, and it wasn’t. It can be exceedingly hard to know what to trust at all, so for me I haven’t trusted anything really — no person, no belief system, no bestselling book, no podcast — because that’s what has felt the safest for me. But what I have done throughout my recovery is continue to come back to my own emotions and thoughts, and I’ve processed them on the page, and it has always given me the relief that I’ve needed. Because processing these things has been the actual thing I’ve needed to do the most — and that’s exactly what Dr. Sarno and Dr. Schubiner are saying. Being able to express and process what
is actually happening and how we feel about it IS the path forward.

It occurs to me that all those things that I was told about my life — who I was, who I was supposed to be in order to keep others and God happy with me — have been one of the biggest obstacles for me to overcome. It’s produced all kinds of physical pain for me ever since I was a child: stomach aches, indigestion, and other digestive issues. Physical pain that has made it difficult to live and function. But when I started writing, it has been the one thing that has kept me going, and learning about Dr. Sarno and reading Dr. Schubiner has helped me understand why. And they’ve helped me understand that even if another person never even reads what I’m writing, I am helping myself — and that perspective helps me so much.

Here’s what I want you to hear if you are reading this: no one gets to write your story for you. No one gets to say who you are or how your life will end.

I don’t know what you’ve been told about your life, your suffering and pain — maybe it’s that it’s because you are bad and God is punishing you, or is using your suffering to make you stronger, or maybe that your lack of faith is to blame. So you’ve doubled down and tried harder, and it still isn’t getting any better. Or maybe a doctor has given you a diagnosis like chronic
fatigue, anxiety, depression or other label— anything that can’t be easily explained, and like the preacher did, they’ve given you a label and a bleak outlook based on their own educated guesses, when what you actually needed was an explanation that leaves room for change. And you find it difficult to see the way forward. Here’s what I want you to hear if you are reading this: no one gets to write your story for you. No one gets to say who you are or how your life will end. But you do have so much more agency and voice and choice than many people are telling you.

I have encountered so many people who, for various reasons, have had predictions or assumptions about what needs to happen in my life, or who I’m supposed to be, or even who God says I am — and many times I’ve let these people dictate my life, and as a result, time and time again I’ve held back who I truly am, and I’ve suffered as a result of it. But writing has kept me in touch with who I am and from losing myself completely. And I’m grateful for the work of Dr. Schubiner in helping me put the pieces of the puzzle together more as to why.

If you are a survivor of religious trauma, I want to speak directly to your doubts,
your questioning, and your cynicism. They are there for a reason. Your brain is just doing what brains are supposed to do — they are trying to protect you from further harm. It’s okay to take your time, go as slowly as you need to, to observe, to not trust anything for a time. But what is not okay is to let others tell you what you should be feeling or who you should be — that you are unforgiving or faithless or bound to hell because you don’t believe the right things or are not in church. You get to be right where you are. You get to watch and wait and move forward when you are ready.

And for the person who’s been given that diagnosis, the condition that won’t ever get any better, the condition that follows you everywhere — no one else gets to tell you who you are or what your future looks like. You do. No one else. Keep believing in yourself. Keep trusting your desires that sometimes might only show up in something that you are only curious about. Move toward those things, honoring yourself and what you feel. Don’t let anyone tell you that you should just accept what your life is set to be — it’s your life, and it all matters.

Here is a guided meditation by Dr. Schubiner, if you are interested in learning more.

On a final note — last night in the documentary I heard Dr. Gabor Maté quote Jesus’s words about knowing the truth and the truth setting us free. For so long I let preachers tell me what the truth was, their interpretation of what Jesus meant and what the Bible said. But what I’m learning from Schubiner, Sarno, and Maté is that the truth is a lot closer than what we think — as close as our next breath.