Lately I’ve been reading The Happiness Trap by physician and psychotherapist Russ Harris, who is a world-renowned trainer of the ACT modality (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a no-nonsense approach that helps us understand and practice better mental habits that lead to overall well-being. As I’ve been reading it, it’s occurred to me how often my own thoughts run in the background, telling me this book won’t actually work.

What I’m realizing as I work my way through what I’m learning is how easy it is to get hooked by our thoughts and emotions, especially when the things we were taught to believe about ourselves and our feelings in high-control religion were not only incorrect but also fused God into the mix. The disillusionment from that experience has made it incredibly complex and confusing to know what to trust, especially when something promises hope and healing.
Dr. Harris explains that our emotions are signals in our bodies, there to alert us to threats, and that our thoughts are there to help us learn from the past so we won’t be harmed again.

I can only speak to my own experience with high-control religion and what I was taught to believe about my emotions and thoughts. I was taught that at the core of my being I was desperately bad and needed someone outside of me to save me. That someone had placed his spirit inside me, something like a burglar alarm that screams every time there is a threat. Feel guilty? You must have done something wrong. Did you have a lustful thought? Were you focused on something you enjoy too much, making it an idol? Did that trashy TV show put something into your mind that grieved God’s spirit? What I understood back then was that my overactive amygdala was actually God sounding alarms every time I experienced a negative emotion.

If you know anything about complex childhood trauma, you’ve likely heard that most children who are traumatized come to believe something is wrong with them. For me, as a survivor of childhood trauma, high-control religion offered an explanation for my guilt and shame, but those feelings kept me in a pattern of blaming myself for what went wrong. At least God forgave me and said he was pleased with me, which my adopted father never did. God even promised me good things if I just kept listening.

When I think back to those days, I realize how convinced I was that this was the only way to live. When I believed it, it brought real relief, because I was made clean and good and lovable in God’s eyes when I agreed with him that I was bad. And it worked until it didn’t anymore.

I realize, reflecting back on that time, that it stopped working because I was doing exactly what Dr. Harris describes in The Happiness Trap: I was getting hooked by my emotional signals and believing that I was the problem. Guilt meant I had done something wrong, so I believed it and got down on my knees to pray. My emotions created thoughts that I believed and acted on. I didn’t see my emotions as trying to get my attention and help me make decisions about what I valued. I saw them as a judgment, an alarm sounding that something was wrong with me.

But it wasn’t just the negative emotions that hooked me. The positive ones did too. On the days when I wasn’t experiencing an alarm but an actual feel-good feeling, like the one you get after a good night’s sleep, a productive day at work, a commute with no traffic, or a favorite song you sang perfectly on key, I took it to mean God was pleased. I’d finally done something right. The sky had split wide open and I was headed straight to heaven. When those good days lined up with the sermon and worship songs on Sunday, I believed God was pleased with me, and I rode that wave as long as I could. And it worked until it didn’t anymore, until I was exhausted and depleted by a spiritual leader who used my emotions and beliefs to keep himself at the center of my life, leading me to believe that if he was pleased with me, God would be too.

Last night at the monthly meeting for religious trauma survivors, one of the members talked about how, in their own high-control religious system, they learned that they needed others to direct their steps, someone in leadership to tell them what to do. Their words resonated with me deeply. I trusted someone else to tell me what to do because, even though I was told I had God inside me directing me, I was also told I needed someone outside of me to interpret what the signals from God inside me were saying. I believed this for a very long time because it at least gave me a way to cope and an explanation for everything happening in my life. But it also created codependency on a system and a religious leader that almost destroyed me. That’s what maladaptive coping mechanisms do: they help us cope, but they also demand something from us in the process, namely our true selves and the ability to experience the real living that comes from listening to what our emotions are saying about who we are and what we care about.

That’s what ACT teaches: the ability to truly listen and learn from our emotions and what they are telling us about the ways we’ve been harmed and the things we love. Feeling guilty? Maybe it’s not something you did wrong. Maybe it’s that you didn’t notice what you did well.

When you beat yourself up unnecessarily for being triggered by the hurtful words of another person, guilt might be telling you that believing it was your fault lets that person off the hook for their own choices and leaves you carrying something that isn’t yours. Or anger might not mean you are unforgiving; maybe it means someone is not respecting you. Maybe it’s the energy there to help you recognize what you need and make positive changes. And when you wake up and have a good day, maybe it just means you got a good night’s sleep, the traffic cooperated, and you sang on key. It may also mean you made some good choices and your timing was good, and your emotions signaled all of that. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are on the highway to heaven.
Maybe this doesn’t feel like a revelation to you if you didn’t grow up in high-control religion, but it does to me. Just the simple act of acknowledging my emotions without making them mean more than they should is an accomplishment. What I’m realizing these days is how much of what high-control religion taught me about my true self, and about how my body and emotions work, wasn’t correct. But we were told over and over that it was, and we acted on those beliefs. This is where I’m realizing I still have a lot of work to do: actually believing that what I’m learning, even in this book, is right and will work, because a system I was part of and believed in brought a tremendous amount of harm.

Acknowledging that harm is the most important part of the process. Allowing myself to experience difficult emotions without condemning myself or making more of them than there is: that is the work this book is teaching. It’s a process that requires practice, because unlearning is hard work. But I’m starting to realize, as I do the work, that I really can trust myself, and that’s the whole point.A Practice Generated by Claude Sonnet

A Practice Generated by Claude Sonnet

A Practice: Notice, Name, Ask
The next time a strong emotion shows up, try this. Start with something small, like a flash of guilt, irritation, or worry. Save the bigger stuff for when you’ve had some practice.
Pause and notice. Take one slow breath and ask yourself where you feel this in your body. Maybe it’s a tight chest, a clenched jaw, or a knot in your stomach. You don’t have to fix it. Just notice it.
Name it. Say to yourself, “I’m noticing guilt” or “I’m noticing anger.” If a thought comes with it, try adding “I’m having the thought that…” in front of it. For example, “I’m having the thought that I did something wrong.” That small bit of distance can loosen the hook.
Ask what it might be signaling. Emotions are messengers, not verdicts. Ask gently:
Is something here a threat to my safety or wellbeing?
Is something I care about being honored or ignored?
Is someone crossing a boundary?
Or is this an old alarm going off out of habit?
Write down two readings. The first is the old story you were taught (for example, “This guilt means I’m bad”). The second is the signal reading (for example, “This guilt might mean someone is putting their responsibility on me”). You don’t have to decide which is true right away. Just practice noticing that there is more than one way to read the same feeling.
Choose one small action. Ask yourself what you value here and what one small step would honor it. It might be setting a boundary, taking a walk, texting a safe person, or simply letting the feeling be there without acting on it.
A few gentle notes: this is a practice, not a test, and it’s normal for the old interpretations to show up loudly at first. If a feeling ever becomes too big or overwhelming, stop and ground yourself by feeling your feet on the floor or naming five things you can see. Then reach out to a trusted person or a professional who can support you.
What is one emotion you’ve been reading as a verdict that might actually be a signal? I’d love to hear what you notice.

I’m Lori, a writer and peer support facilitator, and the founder of A Liminal Space Coaching. I walk alongside people healing from religious trauma and high-control systems, and I write about what it takes to unlearn what we were taught. Thank you for reading.