Introduction to My Story

Or, the story of the last 12 months...

This is my first *written* post here, and although I have told my story numerous times, mostly in podcast interviews, I have been wanting to write it all down in one place for a long time, but this year my perspective has shifted dramatically on my story, so I feel even more compelled to write it down. I decided that I would start a series here and begin posting my story in parts. It will be interspersed between other posts and series, it will take as long as it takes to get it done, will probably wind in and out and back and forth over the years of my life as things occur to me, but I hope it will be helpful to my readers. Before I start, I want to tell the story of this last year as an introduction.

It has been nearly 12 years since I left the cult, and I have told my story many times over these years, for two main reasons. I have always felt compelled to help others and hoped that what I had been through and what God has taught and healed would do that. It is what kept me going with Reconstructing Your Faith through so many obstacles. I have a deep desire to help others see the Truth and understand who God really is, and what the beautiful Gospel really means for us. I also wanted to tell my story to just try to get it out and feel better, to try to get it out of my system so I could heal and move on. I never felt relieved, aside from perhaps a few moments. I never felt believed enough, and I also almost never felt safer, but I kept telling my story, feeling that if I just told this one part well enough, If I just got someone to understand and help me analyze, then I would finally have this out and I would feel better. I would be ok. I thought talking to a therapist and telling them every single thing that ever happened would somehow help me with new insights that would free me from the panic and overwhelm I carried. Then I would just be able to finally move on. Often, I would tell my husband that I had figured something out from my past, and I would recount to him a story with my “new” analysis. He would tell me that I had said that before, and I would feel defeated. I was living the same things over and over. My past was still feeling very much present. I learned this year that telling the story without processing the trauma was part of the problem.

I have healed a lot in the last decade or so, but I kept hitting the same roadblocks around certain triggers, no matter what I tried to do. The triggers would creep up and before I knew what was even happening, I was reacting strongly to something that was not actually abusive, and isolating, shutting down, or even lashing out in response. I hated this about myself, but triggers seemed to happen without warning, and I did not have the tools yet to recognize and be mindful before I was overwhelmed by the fight or flight reaction. I often repented for having “an idol of safety” (as I saw it) and I would confess this often, thinking, if I could just let go of my need to be safe, then maybe I would just be normal. I wanted to be unguarded, to be a regular person who wasn’t always trying to locate an exit in case of an emergency, who wasn’t always a little bit buzzing with anxiety. I tried. I prayed. I talked about it. I talked too much about it. And I kept on being stuck.

Fall of 2023, I began to pray in a more focused way. I was desperate. I asked God for a lot of things, and He answered and is still answering each of those prayers. One of them was asking him to provide a way for me to get into EMDR therapy because in my research I kept arriving at the same conclusion that I was stuck in fight or flight mode and that I needed my brain to heal to be able to move on. That fall, many triggers and fears had converged to form an extremely difficult time in which every shadow, every single question, every little thing was a threat, and I was terrified. I was hyper vigilant more than I had ever been, and the past felt very much like it was still in the present.

I couldn’t keep on trying to get better on my own by reading theological books, listening to podcasts, even my own personal Bible study. I thought I believed the right things, and wanted the right things, but there was a disconnect between that and my daily reality. My husband and I sought help from our pastor. I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine how frightening it was for me to go to a pastor for help in the ugly midst of my brokenness. As I sat in the church office with my husband and pastor, I seriously contemplated running out into the cold, rainy day to escape, but I convinced myself to sit in my chair and do something different, to stay, to trust. It was vulnerable. I was a mess, and it was showing. When my pastor said, “There’s no way you’re not affected by the 25 years in the cult,” it at first seemed like an accusation and a judgment on what a horrible and messed up person I was, but then melted into a kind and honest acknowledgment of the truth. I was hurt and I needed healing. And that meeting led to my first therapy session with an EMDR trauma therapist.

I started therapy in January of this year. My first therapist (it takes time sometimes to find the right one) immediately diagnosed me with C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which was not a shock, but carried with it a weight that I had real symptoms and problems from trauma. I couldn’t just will them away, or just choose to not feel scared. Before I moved on from that therapist to one who was a better fit, I learned something life changingly important that no one had ever told me before. And that was that telling my story was retraumatizing me, and that immersing myself in the world of advocacy, exposing abusers, and the online arguments, were all retraumatizing me, and I stepped away from those things.

After starting therapy, I started noticing. Therapists will do that to you. They will make you notice. Annoyingly, I had to notice what my body felt like when I was triggered. However, I had dissociated enough from my feelings in order to survive the abuse, in order to be a good Christian that I was taught would not be affected by things like emotions or physical needs, that initially that task alone would overwhelm me. Sometimes, I would even shut down in a session because that kind of work would trigger me. But then I kept trying and I got the hang of it. Simply beginning therapy was enough for me to begin to feel relief, so I also noticed more peace and calm. That felt so nice, and then I noticed even more when the triggered feelings would return, but I also realized just how terrible they felt because I was not dissociating anymore to escape, and further realized that I had felt that terrible way for a very long time and didn’t ever want to go back to it.

My second therapist was a much better fit, and we began to more quickly and actively working toward the EMDR process. (There is a preparation phase before the actual reprocessing begins.) And just as I thought we were going to finally get to what I had been waiting for so long to dig into, I had a bicycle accident. I broke my right elbow and tore my MCL and PCL in my left knee, which complicated things to put it mildly. But even that accident and the accompanying injuries became a redemptive tool of help and healing, and I got back on track.

After months of preparation, we finally began the actual processing part of EMDR, and suddenly one week, I became so upset with what seemed like everything. I was triggered by what I perceived as forced vulnerability. Even at physical therapy, I was exhausted and struggling (physical exhaustion was a side effect of EMDR for me, too). I didn’t want to be vulnerable, weak, and struggling to do basic tasks. I was tired of just how difficult everything felt. I was weary of the fight to heal, and I wanted to quit. That was how I entered my therapy session that week, and top it off, I also felt like God didn’t like me too much, either, like I was in trouble with Him for some reason. Strangely, everything was reminding me of the forced vulnerable nature of the cult, and old false beliefs about God. I refused to do EMDR that week and said, “I can’t do this,” to which my therapist replied in the most serious way she’s ever directly addressed me before, “You are capable of this.” But that day I decided it was too much, and I also told her I felt like God was not for me anymore, either, which was out of character for my usual hopeful outlook on God working in my life. She compassionately prayed for me before I left, and God answered.

I knew that what I was feeling was not based on truth. I knew that I had voluntarily signed up for physical therapy and EMDR therapy and that they were good for me, but I was feeling in full fight and flight mode. I went home and prayed and wrote in my journal to God. I knew I had to get past this major roadblock, or I would not be able to heal. I was tired and weary of the brokenness in my body from the injuries and in my emotions. But I kept praying and I was determined to get through whatever roadblock that was. About that time, I finished a study in the book of Job. I noticed that part of Job’s despair in the trial was his turmoil over whether God was for him and I also noticed, in the text and the commentary I was reading, that if he had just known and believed that God was for and with him, things would have been easier on him, even though he was going through such an intense trial. (More on that in some future articles!) So slowly, my heart calmed, and Truth reigned it again. God was for me.

I was able to handle EMDR and physical therapy in a different way after that. Then just maybe two weeks after that extremely triggered week, we got to Romans 8:28-30 in our series on Romans at church. I will have to spend some time later really delving into that, but the Lord allowed me to deeply internalize the truth, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The next morning, in EMDR, I asked to go to my worst memory from the cult. I was scared, but I was also ready. So I went into it, and I followed my therapist’s prompts and evaluated the scene that has played over and over for me many torturous times before, but that time, I felt the sting of poison leave it. Truth washed over the memory and me, that this, even this horrible thing is being worked for my good, and it was not outside of God’s control. Even this. If that was true of the memory that I felt was somehow unredeemable, and also somehow my fault, then my entire story of abuse shrunk, along with my abuser. A relentlessly raging storm within me that I had learned to live with calmed and stopped.

The best way I can describe what happened was that through both the bilateral stimulation of EMDR and God’s word, truth got injected into my network of memories, and when we tried EMDR with other formerly distressing memories, I just didn’t feel that I had much to process. I didn’t care to analyze and reevaluate my story anymore. I also noticed that gradually, my capacity for many things in the present had expanded, and things that used to trigger me just didn’t.

As of just a couple months ago, I no longer have C-PTSD. It’s a complex feeling for me to no longer have it. It feels like something big is missing. I had been coping for nearly 12 years, and being a survivor had become more a part of my identity than I had realized. Now, I don’t even feel compelled to tell my story to process it or need someone else to believe me. I know what happened to me, but I also know in a deeply internalized way that my life is securely in the hand of my loving Heavenly Father, and He is in control. My story is full of awful things, and yet, it all seems so small to me now, especially my abuser, and when I do talk about my past, I’m calm inside. I am not retraumatized. When I look back, I see a small man who thought he could control my life and destroy me, but didn’t stand a chance against the Shepherd of my soul. My story is not a story of abuse being upcycled, but the story of a life in the hands of magnificently faithful, sovereign, and loving God, who is completely in control.