Episode 39: Religion, Spirituality, Sexism & Mental Health with Dr. Kerry Horrell

This episode, the Mind Dive Podcast turns the guest microphone on its co-host, Dr. Kerry Horrell, psychologist at The Menninger Clinic, to talk about her research into the dilemmas that arise with religion, spirituality, sexism and mental health.  Growing up in a religious family, Dr. Horrell became interested in this topic as a student because her early experience of studying psychology was that “religion was something you checked at the door.” As a Christian, she was confused by this and knew she had to delve deeper, deciding to pursue a graduate psychology program that focused on religion and spirituality. 

She soon became interested in the intersection with sexism, noting that elements of sexism are present in most religions.  Dr. Horrell notes that there are two types of sexism, benevolent and hostile. She explains the three pillars of benevolent sexism: protective paternalism, heterosexual intimacy, and complementary gender roles. She notes that, generally, the assumption is that men and women are psychologically very different. Then points out that the available data does not support that conclusion. Conversely, the research shows that, when it comes to psychological make up, men and women are strikingly similar. 

Dr. Horrell’s research led her to explore whether sexism could positively impact well-being. She discusses two types of wellbeing, hedonistic and eudemonic. Hedonistic focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; while eudemonic well-being focuses on meaning and self-realization and the degree to which a person is fully functioning. She discusses research that demonstrates sexism correlates more positively with hedonistic well-being and negatively with eudemonic well-being, giving examples from studies that have been done. 

Dr. Horrell says the benevolent sexism in religion can lead to shame. She gives examples, such as the focus on a women’s purity.  She notes that when patients are having struggles with spirituality or religion, it often relates to gender, sexuality, and shame. She observes that these conflicts can cause trauma.  

In working with patients, Dr. Horrell says clinicians must “hold space for the importance of religion, family and spirituality in a patient’s life and empower them to think about their values and identify those things that are at odds with that.”  She says one of the best things a clinician can do is to offer patients the space to stay with the tension and the pain, to think about and it talk about it, without closing quickly on what might feel easy. 

“I think there's so much goodness in having things in our life that are sacred to us, and having things that feel bigger than us,” said Dr. Horrell, “Whether that's the concept of love, whether that's nature, whether that is divinity or God…and it's why I'm so passionate about it and about giving people space to get to know that side of their life.”

Follow The Menninger Clinic on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new Mind Dive episodes. To submit a topic for discussion, email podcast@menninger.edu. If you are a new or regular listener, please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform!

Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.

Transcript

Mind Dive Podcast - presented by The Menninger Clinic

Episode 39: Religion, Spirituality, Sexism & Mental Health with Dr. Kerry Horrell

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

women, sexism, benevolent sexism, religion, men, spirituality, psychology, research, relate, talking, beliefs, life, ultimately, people, big, religious, important, shame, patients, work

SPEAKERS

Dr. Bob Boland, Dr. Kerry Horrell

Dr. Bob Boland  

Welcome to the mind dive podcast brought to you by the Menninger Clinic, a national leader in mental health care. We're your hosts, Dr. Bob Boland,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

and Dr. Kerry Horrell.Twice monthly, we dive into mental health topics that fascinate us as clinical professionals. And we explore those unexpected dilemmas that arise while treating patients. Join us for all of this, plus the latest research and perspectives from the minds of distinguished colleagues near and far. Let's dive in.

Dr. Bob Boland  

We will go for against let's start by saying that and we have great respect and we've been have some lucky people. And so lucky to have I mean, they're not working. We're the ones that are lucky. Very. Absolutely. That being said, so now that we've established that we don't play favorites, this is by far my favorite guest. So here we go.  We're especially lucky because we, you know, we've been promising this for a while, but we finally decided to do it. So today our my guest I guess is our co-host, Dr. Kerry Horrell. Hello. Hello, welcome. Welcome to the show. Yeah, right. Exactly. She's still sitting in the same place, by the way. So it's not like, there's no seat of honor. But there she is. Dr. Horrell, as you probably already know who is working here at the Menninger Clinic. She's a staff psychologist. She's also the division coordinator for the youth inpatient services. So you're, you're I mean, you're already in leadership, kind of running things, you help run things. Clinically. She's also Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and Behavioral Science at the Baylor College of Medicine. So we're gonna hear more about her clinical interest today. But her clinical interest just for the record include things like treatment of trauma, shame, particular focus on self compassion, vulnerability and mindfulness. Her research has surrounded religion, spirituality, gender, sexuality, and how they relate to each other, and to mental health outcomes. Welcome very much.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

That was fun.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Exactly.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I should say. I actually didn't put this on there. But I have for about a year now also been an adjunct faculty of the Institute for spirituality and health.

Dr. Bob Boland  

right. And he had a recent conference, ya know,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

our conference coming up. Oh, really? already happened by the time this drops, but for the any

Dr. Bob Boland  

future. That's why I said it. I knew

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I know. Yes, you did. The Psychotherapy and Faith Conference happens every year in November. But yeah, that's coming up. Right. That's co sponsored by Menninger as well,

Dr. Bob Boland  

what are you talking about there?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I'm not talking this year. I'm on the planning committee. We have our past podcast, guest, Dr. Dilip Jeste, as you know, and I'm freaking thrilled about it. So shout out to him.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Alright. But today, we're talking to you. I know how weird we really just being being talked about religion based shame and the development of gender and sexuality beliefs. A mouthful. Okay. Yeah. All right. And you know, if you had taken the sheet away from me, yes. And as stated in the first sheet, yeah, exactly. Yes, the bar notes. Okay. And it's, but she had asked before, if I had to introduce her. Without the sheet in front of me, I would say that, among other things, she's the expert I'd go to, if I saw dilemmas with religion and spirituality and psychiatric illness, certainly the person I would call is Dr. Horrell. And that is something we see a lot and I think a lot of people do. So I'm glad that we're talking about this today. Exciting. Yeah, yeah. So first of all, I mean, the usual opening questions, you know, how did you get interested in this, you tell us about your career.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

So I didn't think I was going to study sexism and religion when I headed into grad school. That was definitely not what I thought was going to be the trajectory. So I went to kind of a bigger public college. I went to University of California Irvine, go Anteaters forgot that for a second. Okay, it was the anteaters. I know, that's a marsupial, I think, the fighting, fighting marsupials. So I went to like a bigger public college. And so my classes were huge. I mean, like, most of my major, major classes, were like, 500-person lectures, like just the big classes. And I remember a couple professors like barely touching on religion and spirituality and sort of the message was like, check that at the door, if you're going to go into psychology, like there was really the vibe was like, There's no room for that in psychology. Much the same as psychiatry. Yeah. And I didn't really know what to do with that. As somebody who was a person of faith, I was Christian. I was my first time away from home and I was super involved in my church growing up. And so I was kind of confused about that. And it was such a part of my identity, and I didn't know what to do about that. So when it came time to apply to grad school because I knew I wanted to be a psychologist. I knew that for a long time, in ways that when I look back, I don't really know how I knew that. I don't know how I knew I wanted to be a psychologist.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Quick, what age do you think? Like

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

in middle school or even high school?

Dr. Bob Boland  

How'd you even know what it was?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I  don't, I don't know. Honestly, I wish I could go back and figure out that timeline because I, I think I've dissociated some of that away, because I don't know why. But I do. Remember, I declared my major in psychology before I'd ever taken a psychology course. Like, it's not like I took a class and I thought, Oh, I like this. Like, it was like, I know doing psychology, and I loved it, thank God. But I, when it came, I was like, Okay, I want to go to grad school. And that could be a whole other talk for any students listening of like, how you decide if you're going to do grad school, you do a master's in social work, you know, marriage and family, you're gonna go, PhD, PsyD, for a hot second, I thought about going to medical school and doing psychiatry for a second. And then I remembered that blood and needles make me pass out. And I thought that would probably. So then anyways, I ended up deciding I'm going to go, I'm going to do a program that focuses on religion and spirituality. I think this would be helpful for me to better understand how this relates to mental health, how does it relate to psychology, so I go to Biola University in Los Angeles, okay. And at the time, I actually really thought I was gonna end up studying child psychology clinically.  I'd worked a lot with kids, I was a nanny for a long time. And within like, not long, like, what's a few weeks in our program, you don't apply into work with an advisor, you get there, and then you you decide and an advisor, and most advisors only take like one, maybe two. And so once an advisor gets taken from your cohort, they're done. So then there was like, just competitive vibe of like, you have to get and so we're pretty early on I, Dr. Liz Hall, love this woman. Early on, I found out that she led a research group on women's issues for particularly psychology and religion. And I was just immediately like, I don't know what that is, I want that. I was able to recognize pretty like, through college again, with all these questions, how much I had grown up in a particular religious mindset that was fairly conservative, and particularly around stuff like being a woman.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So yeah, I guess I was gonna ask that. You know, since you bring it up. You say, you were brought up in religion in Europe? Would you consider yourself a religious person?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I still consider myself a Christian. By that took a long time to come back to because I grew up in a pretty fundamentalist religious home. And I had a lot of, as I went through college and grad school had a lot of like, pushback to like, that's not what I believe. But still finding that like, I do believe in like a lot of the core tenants of Christianity. But like, again, a lot of reconciling. And I think part of my reconciling came through spending so much of my research in my doctorate on thinking about issues of sexism in religion, and realizing how much sexism is in many different religions, like the higher preponderance of sexism among religious communities. And 

Dr. Bob Boland  

You may want to say more about that, but it seems like yeah, be honest, everyone.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

And I will say more about that. But to finish, like the personal part of it, I think even things like in high school, I really wanted to be in but I really wanted to start getting involved in my church, and I got a lot of pushback for the sole reason that I was a woman, like, you can work with the kids. You can do stuff with music, women. Yeah. And then like, even like thinking about college, and like thinking about med school, like a lot of questions about like, but what about kids? And what about and that's some, I think what we'll talk about today is like, just ideas about what it means to be a woman and what like your task and role is in life. And again, the beliefs and I grew up in and realizing how much it impacted me and how much I really didn't like it, like I was I have a bit of a rebel in me, that was sort of just from a young age, like like this, that doesn't sit with me, right. So again, I get to grad school, I find out that like, people are doing research on this. I was like, what?

Dr. Bob Boland  

I missed it, but now going into graduate school. Was this something you knew you wanted to study? You know, like, none of my essays, you chose a mentor, you know?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, honestly, I don't even know that I thought people were thinking about this. Like, that's how much it was part of my like the fishbowl that I was raised in like, that was the water that was so embedded in like gendered ideas that the idea that there was psychological research has been published in reputable journals about the experiences of religious women, men and women and their experience of gender. I was like, shocked that people heard about that and that they were doing research on it and so you like immediately I was drawn to it. Like in a pretty like annoying way I like was like when do I meet with Liz Hall? Door I was like hi Dr.  Hall. I'm Kerry. I am a first year graduate student and obsessed with you.  And it's funny to she's, she's like, as a person, you know, we need to we need to listen to this podcast. As a person she's, she's, she's pretty stoic. I don't know if she's determined, although she's but she's, she's much less gregarious than me. And I felt like I was such a little puppy around her. I was always like, Hi, Dr. Hall. Glad to see you. She was always like, Hi Kerry. Anyways, I just mad respect and love for this woman. And she really again, she really shepherded me through like, all of my research and helping me also like, again, like not just the science research part of it, which again, we'll get to what I studied, but there's also like in on a very personal level of like, they say research is me-search like this is true, we are drawn towards studying the stuff that has impacted our own life and stuff that's affect the lives of people we know. And the stuff we get passionate about is stuff that usually close to home. And so she also like was such a big part of like shepherding me through this process of there's also a lot of hurt and pain as like my experience of sexism in the challenge.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So tell us more about that. So can you say more just about sexism in religion? Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

So as you said, it didn't sound surprising to you. But if you wonder like this is I was curious how this lands on people, but just statistically, so be measured as different measures for sexism. Sexism, was specifically kind of defined. And of course, like, we all know, it's sexism. It was really fun to researchers, man, I'm remembering only their last names right now Glick and Fiske, I want to say one of their first names. But I might be the Janet Hyde. Anyways, all this to say they were two of the main researchers who said, Hey, we are interested in thinking about sexism as a form of discrimination because it's it's different than other forms of discrimination in the necessity of interdependence between men and women. So in other in-group, out-group forms of discrimination, you can just say, we don't want anything to do with the output. But in regards to men and women,and the continuation of our species.,we can't do that. And so they created the theory of ambivalent sexism, that sexism as a form of discrimination is inherently ambivalent, because of the fact that it can't just be "away with you now,"  because of the mutual dependenc men and women have to have.

Dr. Bob Boland  

These may be people you love. Yeah,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

exactly. And so under the theory of sexism, there's two major forms. There's hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. Okay, hostile sexism will feel very familiar one seems pretty clear. Yeah. Like women suck. We don't like women. Women are less than men are inferior. Like

Dr. Bob Boland  

it's fine to traditional. Yeah. Well, not okay. That's a little okay. I know, you're gonna say

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

the hospital says just more, but in

Dr. Bob Boland  

the sense of restricting woman from other roles, you can't do these things, you can only do these things. And that's kind of hostile,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

a little bit that actually was more often fall under benevolent sexism.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Okay. All right.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

And so before you even know that all this to say they, there's ways to study both types of sexism, and they have found that there's higher rates, particularly of benevolent sexism in nearly sounds

Dr. Bob Boland  

like the more interesting one in every

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

religion, but particularly Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the big ones. Yeah. Like there's not that I'm familiar with. Like, I don't have any citations on that. But yeah, the ones that that I've definitely seen are like the Muslim community Christian community, especially evangelical Christian community, Judaism, and I, my research focused entirely on evangelical Christianity.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Okay, so tell us more about benevolent sexism since like I said, that's interesting. What's playing out one by one?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Right. It sounds like an oxymoron. Like jumbo shrimp. Like, it's like, it's been that that's your go to for oxymoron? Do you have one?

Dr. Bob Boland  

Military Intelligence?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I think that are both great examples of oxymorons, and benevolent sexism we're gonna throw right in there. Because how could you have something like that's a form of discrimination that's benevolent? Benevolent, doesn't harmless like no big deal.  And ultimately, it's sort of like the on the surface, like the happy side of sexism. We don't hate women. Women are special. Yeah. Women need to be cherished...that we cherish them need to protect women. We love women so much we need to shelter them, right. And so benevolent sexism in general is three pillars. The one we're just talking about protective paternalism, the idea that women are kind of weaker, and they therefore they need to be protected. Okay, and put on a pedestal. The next one, heterosexual intimacy. This has to do with the idea that like "you complete me." , LIke women's sort of exists to serve as the other half of men. Yeah. And then the last pillar, every romantic

Dr. Bob Boland  

movie or many of the weddings I've been to Yes, yeah,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

yes. And then the last one is complementary gender roles, which is the idea that many women again, there's not hierarchy. Yeah. So that men and women just have inherently different psychological traits.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Yeah. It's evolutionary. Yeah. I believe. Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Exactly. But like, the men and women are just different. Yeah. And so therefore, they should or ought to take up different familial and societal roles in their life. Those are the main pillars. And again, there's there's parts of that too that have to do with like, women have more cultural sensitivity, women are more moral. Women are more attuned to the arts, they're more thoughtful, they're kinder, gentler, again, just the women

Dr. Bob Boland  

are different things that we associate with maternal, yeah.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Which again, just to throw this out there. Now the spoiler alert, like most of the research doesn't back this up like the, this is Janet Hyde. She wrote this really landmark paper called The Gender Similarities Hypothesis,"  which was a meta analysis that really looked at gender differences among psychological constructs, and there is some around like aggression. But like, for the most part, men and women are remarkably similar in regard to psychological makeup when you're just looking at gender, like individual differences account for most of the differences between people, not gender. And so we don't actually have the data to support that. So again, this is why it does fall into sexism. It's a stereotype it's a belief. It's really all of those the beliefs that fonder benevolent sexism would support that women are weaker. They're not meant for positions of power. They're not meant to be

Dr. Bob Boland  

so not just physically weaker, but weaker in all respect. And they

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

need to be protected by men. And so again, there's a there's a high preponderance of benevolent sexism in religious communities, particularly evangelical Christianity and I got interested in that. And I was like, Well, alright,

Dr. Bob Boland  

this may be too hard to answer and stuff. But is this particular to religion? Or is this the fact that these are parts of very traditional cultures that go back? Hundreds, 1000s of years? And that's just the way people thought that?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I think both because I think those those are inextricably bound up religious tradition that time. But I think that definitely, so one of the things and this is, again, would be for a longer conversation. But there's a whole literature in the world of religion and spirituality on the psychological concept of sanctification, and sanctification, meaning when you imbue or see a part of your life as divine, as related to your faith, and in general, parts of life that are sanctified that the people experience as part of their larger sense of spirituality, there's greater, more positive outcomes associated with it. So if you're, if you tend to see your marriage as sanctified, there's that tends to go along with higher using or higher, that's another word for positive outcomes related to marriage. And so a lot of the research, Ken Pargament,  who is a biggie in the world of religion and spirituality, he really was one of the people who really looked at sanctification. And like a lot of the early movement on sanctification particularly wanted to look at the positive side of it. How does sanctification and actually seeing your faith traditions, your, like your spirituality in your life, actually improve your quality of life, which they found. And there's been this sort of like second move, and Jim Lomax whose a professor emeritus. 

Dr. Bob Boland  

Yes. And who spoke on this? Yes,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Emeritus, did I  say it, right? I every time I go to say it, again, saying that word, right. I still probably don't remember it. Emeritus. He's really interested in this. And he's been one of my mentors. And we've thought about this. So one of the things I got interested in was the sanctification of sexism, which is the idea that people might see their sexist beliefs as justified because they, they interpret this as biblical. This is the Bible says to do harm. And so so and I actually, I remember having a conversation with one of the people who when I was growing up was an elder at my church. He was a father of one of my good friends, too. Yeah. And we talked about it and I gave him when I was going through grad school at home for Christmas one year, and I gave him like, the, the inventory you can give for sexism. And I was reading through it. And he's like, yes, yes. True. True. That being like, this is a sexism. Yes. this is a sexism. Right. Yeah, then  I'm sexist, because that's all Biblical that look like it was sort of just like, I don't care what your science and reading  you know, and and ultimately, again, so I've been interested also in that idea of like, what does it mean that I do think for many religions, this goes back to like, religious texts as well. And interpretation of religious text and ideas of like, well, this is what God wants. This

Dr. Bob Boland  

People is quoting that one, I don't know one of the letters. There's something about one of the pieces. What was an outcome in First Timothy, Timothy, okay. That was it. Like basically the women listen to your husband, be subservant? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then then like men, be good to your wives. It's pretty much seems to like the paraphrase, right, which is kind of, you know, seem to reinforce a role.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

So you know, for my program, we also took like a whole series of theology classes and one of our theology classes we have to take a verse you know, some some piece of religious texts we have to do like a, it's called an exegetical. Oh yeah. And anyways I did.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Can you read like ancient Greek or something? 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Well, I had to use these big O M framework for non important biblical commentaries, they're called.

Dr. Bob Boland  

they have these ones that just put the different text next to each other. And yeah,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

and ultimately, what I came to and all that was that religious texts, the Bible, otherwise are deeply complicated and one must look for it on the surface too often, I think you get to

Dr. Bob Boland  

though, I would argue you can't necessarily just interpret everything away. Some of the stuff that is probably what they thought. I mean, it may well be that a sexist person wrote that

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

honestly,  we can get into that. Hashtag, Paul. Okay. But it isn't gonna get I think that like, it's my right.It's time, tradition, religious texts. Yeah.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So you're dealing with all this stuff where it's been sanctified. It's you know, people have have, they can quote something to kind of justify their beliefs and stuff. So the next step is we want to talk about, like, you know, how does this like relate to shame? what's the, what's the downside of?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, that's again, so like, the the

Dr. Bob Boland  

first the first size, but I guess, you're talking about because it's psychological. Well,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

the first thing I got interested in was wellbeing. And I thought about like, well, who cares about sexism unless it's doing something bad? You don't I mean, like, yeah, I don't think it's great. But like, ultimately, like, there's, there's got to be these like costs.

Dr. Bob Boland  

What's the downside? Yeah, otherwise, it's just a quirky tradition, man.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah. And so I got interested in studying wellbeing. And I actually got deep into like, the philosophy side of wellbeing when I did my dissertation, because turns out well being as a psychological construct is pretty freakin vague one.  It's like, it's like, what does it mean to be well, what does it mean to be like, right, you know, have it be, right? You're okay. You know, it's a complicated thing. But what we found are we started looking outside. Right? Well, well, being in Science in Psychology tends to be operationalized as life satisfaction, and more or less like a more hedonistic way of looking at pleasure, you feel good, you feel satisfied, things feel happy. And so that when you look at like well being like most of the time, that is what it's conceptualized. Inyour grand rounds,

Dr. Bob Boland  

you used some fancy word for that. deepness, some hedonist. Oh, no, eudo- somethng. 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

That's the other side. Oh, I'm

Dr. Bob Boland  

sorry. Okay. I'm anticipating. I can't wait. Because that's like my word for today.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

So the word your looking for is eudaimonia.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Where did you come up with that word?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I didn't, it's Aristotle came up with it, Nicomachean Ethics, I'm telling you, I went deep with she went deep into the philosophy writing this darn dissertation. But ultimately, I was interested in this not only because of again, interest in sexism, but back to Dr. Liz Hall, queen, she was really shouldn't meaning making it suffering. And so she also got me interested in this idea of, like, well, could you suffer and be well, because everything? So I hope so. Not exactly. But I have to describe though. So it's like if we're going to say, in psychology, in general, we're saying well being is to feel good, what happens when you don't feel good? Can you still be well, and that type of well being eudaimonic well being, which is

Dr. Bob Boland  

again, so So what's the difference? Because I used I obviously have completed this I actually have it and I actually haven't. Hedonistic is just pleasure. Yes.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

And eudaimonia has to do with values, virtue, meaning and being able to, again, simply like the deeper things of life, fulfillment, fulfillment. So I got interested in that I got interested in how does sexism impact that kind of well being? Okay. And ultimately, the question that ended up on my mind was: Does sexism feel good, like, as far as the hedonistic side, but actually impact something deeper? And so that's what I looked at. And to again, make a complicated story short, we found that to be more or less be true. That there is a different relationship between sexism and hedonistic well being and sexism and eudaimonic well-being. And that difference is? That sexism tends to more positively correlate to hedonistic well-being. And it tends to more negatively correlated with eudaimonic well-being.  Can you give an example?  Yes. I know this is jargony. So there's this whole theory in psychology of system justification, which is that we want to believe that the systems that we live in feel good.  Okay. And so oftentimes, that tends to relate to higher well being, we believe in the systems that we do, and I was studying Christian men and women, religious, evangelical men and women. And so it might it might feel like no, I believe in this this is okay, this feels good. But on the flip side, things like being able to actualize your potential. So if you have strength within you that you would want to live out. But your gender role says that you don't have the opportunity to do that because women don't do that, that would take a hit on your ability to actualize your potential. And that's the kind of stuff that relates to eudaimonic well-being. Okay. So ultimately what I'm saying here, and what we found that that was really interesting was that that is for both men and women, because women who in sexism are on the lower end of the hierarchy. Yeah, you'd expect that, like they're on the front end of it. But also, if you're gonna take like psychological traits and sort of slice them down the middle and be like you as a dude, you get these ones, and you as a lady, you get these ones, we both don't have access to some traits that we just might do that which you might have like, you're a psychiatrist, and I'm going to generalize for a second, but that means that you probably, and I know, you are warm, empathic,

Dr. Bob Boland  

very much. So everyone's like, great. Yeah,

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I know, you. And I know you are those things. And traditionally, that is considered more feminine. And as a woman, as you alluded to, at the beginning, actually, I don't know if this is going to make the podcast. But you did say that you've got to make a great leader. And perhaps I thought leadership qualities

Dr. Bob Boland  

I was insulting you, I was calling you a man. 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, exactly. Here I am calling you a lady.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

And so under, like, under a system of traditional gender roles, like we didn't get to live out those parts of ourselves, because in any sort of real meaningful way, because that sort of

Dr. Bob Boland  

takes away from people like, you know, everyone wants to spend more time with their kids, for example, and yet that may be seen as like, not a guy's thing.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Yeah. That's what I got into into grad school.  No. So your question is, how does this all relate to shame, and I have not got that at all, but I still

Dr. Bob Boland  

wants to, I just have to cover this. And I know, we're just gonna spend some more time may not get to important yet. So I need to move along. But how black and white is, it's like, is all sexism harmful? Like, what are the things like the things that are encompassed under things like are like under chivalry? I know, it's too hard. I know. Not. Maybe it's not enough time, because I can just picture people measuring machine. Okay. Okay. So I hold the car when I opened the car door for women. Am I doing her harm by doing that? And the answer may be yes, I don't know. But, but I know people would ask that. 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

if it came down to a black and white yes or no, the answer is yes. That chivalry is the benevolent sexism, they are one in some. And let me give you an open book about it. I'll give you one example. Okay. All right. So this is a classic benevolent sexism setup, where some of the, you know, they're bringing in participants, usually female participants, under the guise of like, and this is a real one, let's say it's a math test we're going to do so they're college students are coming in to do a study on math. And as all psychological studies do, starts in the waiting room, they're waiting for the math test. And so here's your here's your, your two groups, the control group,

Dr. Bob Boland  

So wait is it all all men?  It is men and women , or just women?  Just women.  

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

 In your control group, you've got a like one of the the people who were in all the studies of hey, woman, one of the participants, will you help me with this heavy box?  And in the control group, the woman helps with a box. That's it. In the sexism group, when the person asks the woman for help, a man steps in and says, "Oh, no, let me help you with that." And that's it. Those are the only two differences between these two groups of people. One witnesses an act of benevolent sexism, the other doesn't. What they found repeatedly was that people who are exposed to benevolent sexism, particularly women, they perform worse on math tests after that.  They go into mock interviews, and they tend to downplay their actual capacities and strength and play their relational capacities. They tend to objectify their body more after being exposed to benevolent sexism. And the list really goes on.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So it goes on. And so it has so does, it has a psychological effect.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah. And it can you see, it's another form of discrimination to that, like, when it's called stereotype threat, it's like it ends up taking an actual cognitive energy when a type of stereotype is begun to be activated in your mind. And it changes how we think even in ways that are kind of unconscious and out of our own awareness. This ultimately, yes, like, and I say that with a lot of, you know, gray area, like, you know, when when my when I'm in an airplane, and I'm holding my coffee that I obviously got at Starbucks before I got on the airplane, which is always a bad idea, but I still do it anyways. And I've got my backpack, and I've got my bag and my husband, who was smart and didn't get a Starbucks. And he's like, let me get your bag up there. Like, I know he's doing that, not because I'm a woman, but because I'm juggling being helpful. And ultimately, like, if I held the door for you, I don't think you'd be like, Oh, no, I can't go through this door. Let me you go for you know, like, even though I mean, quite frankly, a lot of men will do that, which that's a whole other conversation as a therapist on an inpatient unit where I need to have them go on to the unit first. Yeah, that happens a lot.

Dr. Bob Boland  

Actually have to be the one holding the door.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

They're like, no, no, you first and I'm like, you first.  Anyways, but I think like to, for everybody to hold in mind that like yes, it feels so benign on the surface, like research has shown that even small exposure to benevolent sexism does seem to have an impact.

Dr. Bob Boland  

ourselves. Because, you know, obviously the question I might even ask myself at the time is like, what I've done this if this was a guy and like, of course, I would have been like, yeah, you probably wouldn't have. Okay, so fair enough. Where should we go with this? So we bring this to the clinical. Is it time?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Let me... can I say a few things about the shame?

Dr. Bob Boland  

Yeah, that's getting cynical. But

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

sexism and sex in general, it ends up impacting and getting inside of us, we internalize that. We've all internalized it, just like we've all internalized racism. We've internalized these messages, and I think the work is, how do we actually get to know it, so we're not acting on it, and we begin to kind of get moved through it?  And so within religious communities, because it's so prominent, this is often the place where you end up seeing shame develop. So for example, like we see a lot in regard to especially women's bodies, and sex. There's just a ton of shame around sex, because part of benevolent sexism is also a focus on women's purity. And there's this whole aspect within the religion, particularly evangelicalism, called purity culture, which is this idea that like women's sexual purity, and abstinence is really important. And it's important for guys too, but it's especially important for women. And purity culture kind of has its roots in the idea that like women's value comes from their sexuality and their ability to even like give themselves as like a sexual object to a husband someday. And again, just some of the ways that this gets internalized as, like, my worth is in my body. My worth is in my virginity, you know, there's sadly really common trope that was like going around youth groups in the early 2000s. There's like, hundreds of stories of women who experienced it, and was always just women. What they did was they took something, I had this happen, and it was a peach, and the, the version I got, where they do something, and they like, take this object like a peach, and they like bruise it or something. And in this analogy, you're the woman, you're the peach and the bruise is sex, and it's sort of impacted you and it's like, would you anybody really want this bruised peach?  Do the same thing with like, they've done it with gum, or it's like, once gum is chewed, it's never not going to be chewed again. Or they've done it with like, they've everybody pass around this rose and take it and everybody touch it. And then they hold it up at the end. And it's like this broken petals rose, and it's like, it's broken petals rose, and it's, yeah, it's like, oh, nobody's gonna want this. And ultimately the idea that like sex is, it's so damaging. It's damaging to you as a woman and it's, you're gonna lose your value of what you what you should be. And so again, these are well, yeah,

Dr. Bob Boland  

and I think it's no mistake, you just examine our language, right? There's many more derogatory terms for a sexually active women than a sexually active man.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, yeah. And even then, there's also things like, and Lord knows we could do a whole podcast on this too, about like, sexuality. So things like being gay, being trans,

Dr. Bob Boland  

A whole area we probably aren't going to have time to get into, especially when you talk about religion.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah. And like, just the idea that like, that's not only not okay, that is sinful. That is, and even this the whole realm of sexuality, I think there's so much idea around the like, that sexuality is bad, until it's not, like then all the sudden wants to get married, and supposed to be go from this thing  that's just like, so awful,  to this thing that's supposed to be good. And like the complications within that.  Now it's  sacred. Yeah, now it's sanctified. And then, of course, the issue of gender roles. And so you have couples who are trying to divide the division of household labor and work and trying to figure that out. I think, especially women end up holding just so much shame. Because quite frankly, like,

Dr. Bob Boland  

we covered that some when we talked about burnout in physicians, remember, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Of having a dual role.  Right, how's

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

he doing? You know, how do you end up trying to reconcile that maybe like, your belief system is that women should be you know, caretaking the children but maybe also, we live in a world now where most, most like a lot of women work and you know, trying to navigate that. And again, I think the shame is always I always come back to shame that like this feeling that like there's something wrong with me. God doesn't love me. My community thinks that I'm not good enough. Yeah, like, pretty, pretty frequently. You mentioned this, but that is actually something that I consult around the hospital quite a bit around is when somebody's depression or their, whatever their presenting problem is, relates to spiritual struggles. And it's actually quite common, that some of the spirit of struggle relates to gender or sex.

Dr. Bob Boland  

That makes it makes sense to put it that way. And we're, we're kind of verging onto the the clinical now because now we've talked about shame, so we're getting psychological and just can you I mean, this might have to be a two parter sometime or we might have to have a follow up at some other time, because I don't think We're gonna cover a lot.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

incise

Dr. Bob Boland  

Well, this is great, Tom. So I mean, it's fascinating, right? And I'm not. But so but at least Can you say a bit about like, has this impact what you see clinically?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, like, on as, as your co-host, I'm gonna tweak the question just a little bit. I've also liked it turn up. I'm an ornary guest. Yes. But also like for our listeners, what could they do if they encounter it as a mental health clinician? Okay, I think that's fair, because because I think while expertise in a particular religion, thank you, thank you for that approval, man. But I, you know, I think that, really, the skills that we bring as psychotherapists as clinicians are the same, it's the same skill set.  We're going to try to be non judgmental. We're going to try to listen and especially have an ear out for ambivalence, cuz I think so many people are wrestling. And the problem is when we foreclose on either side, and I think oftentimes, psychology can feel like it's at odds with religion, and religion can feel like it's at odds with psychology. And so that's the space for people to have like, even in therapy, space to just say, "My religion is important to me, my spirituality is important to me, my faith tradition, and what my family believes is important to me. And I feel this way. And, and I have this identity, and those things are at odds with each other." That's actually, there's not always a lot of space to hold that tension. Because a lot of people will say, "Well, who cares about your family, then get away from that religion can weaken that community," or on the flip side, their religious community or family might say, "well, you need to not have that that's not okay identity."  You know, and it's like, just give people that space to actually allow themselves to be in the tension of both of these things matter to me. And then to empower people to think about their values, and help them clarify what is important to you, how can you choose for yourself? And to me, that is that is eudaimonic well being in action, it's  thinking about your values, and what's important to you, and how do we  as therapists help our patients find that path? And at times, it might be painful for us as therapists, because we might be like, oh, like? 

Dr. Bob Boland  

Well, I think it's particularly tricky, because it gets back to what you said in the beginning, I forget the exact words you use, but the notion of like, kind of inside or outside the group, and, you know, it's often like we're helping patients kind of divest themselves of, of harmful thoughts or harmful beliefs, right, that's a lot of what CBT is, or right, or erroneous beliefs and stuff like that. But in this, you know, so for instance, like in the example you get from racism or something, I mean, you're kind of helping them sort of realize that, you know, that the assumptions about that is just plain wrong, and that they shouldn't buy into it. Whereas here, I mean, this, these might be people's core values. And the other goal is not to say, well, then just stop believing in God, you know, and that, that all this stuff is just very harmful. I mean, so how do you how do you work with that, because that's more subtle to me.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

One of the people who've been most impacted on helping me think about this more is Jim Womack. And I remember he, he really empowered me at some point when I was wrestling with some of this to say, like, you can share your psychological knowledge with patients, even when it goes against their fit, like their faith system, and then you are allowed to let them make up their mind. So a big question that comes up among religious youth is masturbating. Okay? Is pornography okay? Is it okay that I'm having sex? What I do is I offer them the, the knowledge I have based on psychological science, which is masturbating is healthy.  It can become something that's unhealthy, it can become something same with porn use. Like it can become something that's addictive. We're throwing it back to a lot of podcasts episodes today. Like hashtag Dalanna Burris, that has, these are things that can become unhealthy, but like, fundamentally, having sex intimacy, masturbating, like these are not unhealthy things and help people actually know, like, what is the balance of healthy and normal and developmentally appropriate? Like, that's what I share with them. And I let them know, you're allowed to have ideas about what would feel good to you about this. And that can of course, be influenced by your religious beliefs. And that to me, I think that was a big part was learning that, like, I'm allowed to share that. And that's not a mandate that is providing psychoeducation and actually allowing space for patients to be like, well, let me think about how that fits in with my larger values. And what I wanted to do.

Dr. Bob Boland  

I am curious how often this comes up here?  Often.  Yeah, I mean, I would think it was probably in which then makes me wonder how often do we miss it as a core issue?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah, I think it definitely. I mean, we're here in Texas. Evangelicalism is common in Texas, although we have patients from all over the country. But I mean, definitely this issue where people have run into a spiritual struggle or a familial struggle. But I say that is unlike, either within themselves of like, this doesn't go with what I believe or this thing that I'm feeling and experiencing doesn't fit within what my family believes or what my community believes. That's a common issue and it's actually it's quite painful. And it can be very related to anxiety, depression, like trauma. And I think again, one of the best things we can do as providers is offer our patients a space to stay with, like the tension of that pain and think about it and talk about it, without foreclosing quickly on might feel easy, either in wanting to what my family thinks or by just going to forget about this part of who I am. It's giving them that space,

Dr. Bob Boland  

and just having lived in the Northeast most of our life. It's not just Texas.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

No, I lived in California and studied in California.  Like, it's not it really is not that. 

Dr. Bob Boland  

I think a lot of people probably wrestle with this and sort of like, it would seem to me like dealing with sort of like what we make a sort of some of the harmful beliefs and rectifying them with what, you know, religion still is a help to many people, we're not saying it's not, that must be very difficult.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I will say that's probably the thing I care the most about. As somebody who cares a lot about religious trauma is that people who've experienced religious trauma, or even just religious pain, let's say they, you know,

Dr. Bob Boland  

What this trauma is.  Because is what we've been talking about or is more?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Definitely can be a whole lot more. Really, religious trauma is trauma that is encountered in the context of religion or spirituality, which is way vague. It's not. I'll give you example, like I've had a good handful of friends who grew up in the church and they were gay, or they realized they're they're bisexual, or they were trans. And they felt really, like if they began to come out or talk about that they were felt really rejected. And as if there's something deeply wrong and bad about them for having that be a part of who they are. And, you know, I think what can happen for some people, and certainly all people, for some people, they can end up because they've experienced this trauma in the church, that sort of mean, our experience of God and even of our church community is an attachment. And so these are attachment traumas. They're deeply relational, they end up really impacting our sense of self. And so it can end up happening is people just don't want anything to do with religion, or spirituality. And I just don't want any. So like, I'll be doing an interview, because I work with young adults, as we talked about. With the adolescents I'll say it's common in my clinical interviews to ask like: Does religion or spirituality play a part of your life? And I regularly have the answer, "No, and like, I don't want anything to do with it." And what I think what is happening is especially spirituality, gets like it's the baby that gets tossed out with the bathwater, where like, I think there's so much goodness in having things in our life that are sacred to us, and having things that feel bigger than us, whether that's the concept of love, whether that's nature, whether that is divinity, and God,  like the having something, and I think being able to connect and touch base into spirituality, and it's why I'm so passionate about it. And I think giving people space to get to know that side of their life. and stay with that like even through mindfulness meditation, like getting to know, their spirit, their self, their like, again, that there's this this side of things, and reconcile that with again, like a lot of times spirituality is embedded within religion, and how that can be paid to have been painful for a lot of people.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So on a practical level, I mean, when you get the kind of I think many of us are taught to ask that sort of questions, what is important, but when you get the kind of response, I suspect most of us just move on to the next topic. What do you do?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I tend to I mean, of course, it varies, but I tend to especially if it's a very quick response, I'll just kind of bookmark it as a second thing like, oh, I noticed that was kind of a quick or terse or might have sounded like there was some reaction you were having, it makes me wonder if there's been some pain in that part of your life? And so I'll just dive a little bit deeper into that. And on a pretty regular, that's when I hear like, Yes, I grew up going to like this kind of church, this sort of service, and it felt really forced, like this ended up being, you know, like, this has been used against me in this way, or why do yada yada and so I usually try to follow up with that. And I also as part of that, try to ask, if they use a yes, what sort of assets they have in regard to their spiritual or religious life that they can bring into their treatments. And like I pray, and it's really important to meet them. But yeah, let's have that be part of your, your treatment, because that's an asset that we know relates to getting better from, like, mental illness. So that's the stuff. All of these are just skimming the surface of some of these things. 

Dr. Bob Boland  

 I realize that's not all you do. How long, just from a practical point of view. I mean, I imagine it's helpful that you I mean, you're a religious person yourself. And so that's something you can use toward and probably gives you some credibility when you're talking to people.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Yeah. And it's like anything as a more psychodynamic therapist, I am choosy about when

Dr. Bob Boland  

I'm not suggesting you tell them that

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

sometimes. And like sometimes, I will say what feels most comfortable to share with patients is that this is my area of research. I'll share like, I actually research the intersection of religion and gender and sex. And I think that does give like some permission, especially for patients who this has been an area of conflict to just say something along the lines of like, Yeah, I actually I've got quite a bit of like, shame around my sex life or like around like this, that or the other or about like, my gender identity, and just give them the authority like, this is something that's not going to sound foreign to me that, like, there's a conflict there with how you think about that, and your religion, and it's definitely it's really meaningful work to me again, going back to the very beginning, because of like, there's just wasn't a lot of space for that when I was growing up. And I think there were ways that I needed that. And so it's been, it's a really meaningful part of my work to get to, especially work with patients around reconciling, and which that's kind of a big goal, but even opening the door to reconciling some of their their beliefs and their spiritual struggles and just giving them that space. And that's always that's always what I recommend for other clinicians is just don't be afraid to open that space.

Dr. Bob Boland  

And is that the goal at the end is for, let's say, for you to get back to the main subject of like people who felt who have felt harmed by sexism as a result of their religion. Is that what's the goal of the treatment?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

If we know that sexism tends to not really to positive outcomes? Yeah, I think it was a double negative.

Dr. Bob Boland  

I think I got the point. Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

I think helping people recognize the ways that they've internalized sexism, the ways that that does or does not relate to their values. And for them to feel like they are able to live their life in a way that is in line with their values, and not in a way that they've just like, we're just gonna ignore this part, or I'm just gonna act like that ambivalence, isn't there or do what's comfortable, actually feel empowered to live life in line with their own values? That would be the goal. That's the goal. I don't know if that's that then is all that makes sense. 

Dr. Bob Boland  

Tha makes sense. That's right. It's very helpful. So I think we're coming to the end. How was that being on the other side? 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

And I love talking about this. So alright. Thanks for letting me do this. 

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

The word is balance. Non-judgment. Talk about this stuff.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So once again, we've been talking with Dr. Kerry Horrell usually, the co-host,  but today the guest, and in keeping with tradition, you get the last word. 

Dr. Bob Boland  

Thank you very much. I really appreciate you talking with us.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Do you get to do the tag line by yourself?

Dr. Bob Boland  

No, you can share that part. Is that ok?

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Bob Boland  

So once again,  I'm Dr. Bob Boland

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

and I've been Dr. Kerry Horrell and thanks diving in. The Mind Dive podcast is presented by the Menninger Clinic. If you're curious about the professional experiences of mental health clinicians, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen.

Dr. Bob Boland  

For more episodes like this, visit www dot Menninger clinic.org.

Dr. Kerry Horrell  

To submit a topic for discussion, send us an email at podcast@menninger.edu