ATBS w/ Emily Maynard, MA, LMFT
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Jay Coile: Welcome back to the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast. This is an at the bus stop episode and this one, I'm excited about all of them, but this one I'm really excited about because [00:01:00] it's going to be a two parter and I love two part episodes. We are thrilled to have Emily Maynard on the podcast today. Emily is a licensed psychotherapist in California.

She is also a family therapist as well. And she is EMDR certified, which I have tons of questions there. She's going to walk us through a little bit about her work, why she got into that work, and just learn more about her life. She also has a really awesome PowerPoint that she sent us that we are somehow going to figure out how to get that incorporated into a future podcast episode so we can go through it about religious trauma.

So Emily, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining us. Hi, I'm so happy to be here today. Well, wonderful. I'm going to start off with a very, very easy question, because in our conversation you talked about growing up, and I'm being sarcastic when I say it's easy, [00:02:00] but you talked about growing up. And when you grew up, you mentioned a phrase I thought was interesting, you said, I grew up at the intersection of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity.

And I think that kind of helps talk about how you got into what you're doing today. So can you expand on what that means and what it was like for you growing up? 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, in short answer, it means I had a lot of trauma from a lot of different directions. So kind of for the first part of my life, um, my parents went to a Baptist church and I was involved in things like Iwana.

I was completely homeschooled, but I knew about things from evangelical culture in, you know, the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Things like See You at the Poll Rally, True Love Waits, Purity Pledges, things that really took over the national landscape of this rise of this moral majority and evangelicalism across the country.

And then when I was 12, my family started going to this new church plant that was much more fundamentalist and kept us more connected to organizations like ATI, if you watch the Shiny Happy People [00:03:00] documentary. Calvinistic and reformed theology, more emphasis on authority and structure, the ideas that sort of took over, I would say, like the right wing of Christianity, a lot of authoritarianism, political activism, and this idea that we were supposed to take over the country with this very fundamentalist belief system.

Jay Coile: I am so familiar with some of that. See you at the poll. I was at some of those polls and nothing happened

with my WWJD bracelet and my Christian t shirt that I was embarrassed to wear, but I still wore it. 

Emily Maynard: Wow, you were ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Well, 

Jay Coile: I was ashamed of the gospel of Christ. I was scared I was going to get made fun of by the kids wearing the Nirvana shirts. And you probably were. And I probably did.

Yeah. Ha ha ha. 

Johnna Harris: You are at the only pole that Christians are allowed to be around. 

Jay Coile: There was like five of us and the gym teacher. So, all right. I mean, I have tons of questions [00:04:00] there, but I also want to get into the work she's doing today. Anything you can think of you want to bring up? 

Johnna Harris: I just want to dive right in.

I'm so excited for you. Emily has just so much knowledge and wisdom and education surrounding religious trauma and therapy and so I just want to learn all the things from you. So if you don't mind I'd love to just jump in and start with maybe What do you mean by high control when we're talking about high control religious spaces?

What are some characteristics of those spaces? Is that an okay place to start? 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, that's great. I mean, when I say high control, like I would say I grew up in a high control church. And really that comes from, um, in my early twenties, I had a coworker. like a business trip or something like that, and we were just sort of talking about our upbringing and background and who we were a little bit more.

And I was telling her about, you know, my life up to that point. And she said, Wow, it sounds like you grew up in a high control [00:05:00] church and a high control family. And I was like, Wait, what? I had no idea what that meant, but it sent me down this rabbit hole of research and really the idea of a high control community, church, family, any kind of system comes from cult research.

So one thing that I didn't know growing up, like I thought cults were basically anyone who didn't believe what we believed. I thought that cults were sort of based on fringe beliefs. And what I found out when I started researching this in my twenties is that cults and high control groups really are focused around a system.

They're organized around a certain way of behaving and reinforcing the behaviors of the members of that community. So it doesn't actually have anything to do with. any kind of fringe belief, but that there are certain patterns of relationships and behavior and the management of those and enforcement of those.

And that's what's more likely to create a high control group or a cult or a cultic system. So we can talk a little bit about [00:06:00] what I think specifically made the church that I grew up in a cult. If you 

Jay Coile: could talk about, um, yeah, cause I think we, we, we kind of shy away from the term cult and John and I don't like to use it until we bring on the experts and you, you can kind of talk to us about from your own experience.

Yeah. What that looked like for you. 

Emily Maynard: I mean, really in cult research, we find that there's a spectrum. of how intense are these behavioral and systemic reinforcements of the group norms. So I would say like the church that I grew up in, I don't think it probably fits, you know, a technical or like expert definition of a cult.

It's a joke that I like to use at parties, you know, Hey, I grew up in a cult. Very fun. I would say like the church I grew up in was kind of based around a single person, Greg Harris, who is actually Joshua Harris's father. Um, big leader in the homeschooling movement. And he created this church, you know, with a team of other people, but he was really the figurehead.

He was really the sort of celebrity draw, like a lot of churches have. The teaching pastor. [00:07:00] And he really brought together all of these families that had some similar beliefs. So I'm the second of six kids. When we started going to this church, I would say our family size was like medium to small. There were a lot of people that I grew up with, um, at that church that were members of a family of like 8, and above children.

So certainly ascribing to this idea of a quiverful or that large families were somehow spiritually better than people who had fewer children or no children. You know, as those quivers. As the arrows in that quiver, we were supposed to have this mission to change the world. So big central figure, there was a lot of reinforcement of norms, right?

From everything from big families to homeschooling to people eating a certain way. I mean, a lot of the parents and the elders of this group were hippies. So there was a big emphasis on like, whole wheat bread and, you know, raising your own chickens. Sort of this countercultural idea that fed over [00:08:00] from, again, a lot of like, Hippies hanging out in L.

A. in the 70s. 

Johnna Harris: When you just said countercultural, I was like, this is like what everyone is saying right now. That's the new hot word. In particular, I see it in like ACT29 circles, this countercultural movement. So when you say that, I'm like, uh, this is exactly, it's the same 

Emily Maynard: verbiage. Yeah, right. This idea that we're special because we're different.

And therefore, you know, we're, we're holy, or we have some sort of secret knowledge that puts us at an advantage in the world or in a better place in God's kingdom. That's been around in churches for, I don't know, a really long time. 

Johnna Harris: Yeah. This idea of spectrum in general has been really shaping how I engage the world, not just about cults, but about everything.

I'm like, most things are a spectrum and not a binary in general, but we're kind of taught in these spaces that things are very black and white, and there's not a spectrum. There's not room for gray or [00:09:00] for journey or for different humans experiencing things in different ways or having different viewpoints or even definitions of things sometimes.

A lot of our listeners are on a spectrum, so some of them are going to hear the things you're describing right now and say, That was my life. I grew up with that. I really resonate with those things. And then some people, maybe their first encounter with being in a religious community was in ACT29 church, which that type of stuff, we were the brand of Western evangelicalism that was like, we drink craft beer and we have smoking hot wives and we cuss from the pulpit.

So, Both of those, those spaces have similar underlining theologies that are reinforcing toxic behaviors, but they're playing out in different ways on this spectrum of Western evangelicalism. So I think it'd be so [00:10:00] helpful. as you were saying, you said there's kind of like four markers. If you could explain what those were and then maybe give a couple examples of how you've seen that play out in different contexts within Western evangelicalism.

Emily Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. So this is my own organization of these ideas, but they come from the International Cultic Studies Association. There's no definitive list of, like, the markers of a cult, but I sort of group them into four things. The first is that cults are, or high control groups are based on patterns of interaction, not beliefs.

So this tends to look like a very hierarchical organizational structure, power, control, the use of secrecy, very strict leadership, hierarchy, kind of like strange ideas of accountability, um, and who gets to, who sort of gets a pass on their behavior. And who gets to, you know, who gets the hammer dropped on them, essentially.

The second is these groups tend to have increasing control over identity. So I think it's [00:11:00] totally fine and appropriate to say, hey, here's some things we know about healthy interactions in a relationship. Right? But it's totally different to say, there is one way that a couple can interact, and then there has to be a husband and a wife in a couple, and they should be married, and this is the only way that they can relate to each other.

Humans are just a lot more complicated than that, right? No advice will fit in all situations at all times, but in these groups, there's this idea that it should. So increasing control over all aspects of your identity or personhood. Maybe it's your time, right? You're supposed to commit a certain number of hours to serve the church or serve the church leader.

Maybe it's your resources. You're only supposed to homeschool or you're only supposed to buy books from this publisher. Your ideas, the media that you consume, the communities that you're in, all of your relationships, how you spend your money, they become increasingly absorbed into this system. And there's no real exit.

possibility that anything different could be good or fine or [00:12:00] neutral. The third thing is that there's often polarizing and fundamentalist beliefs. So again, a very us versus them countercultural system. And this gets reinforced with verses like we should be in the world, but not of it, right? That is like such a powerful message.

And I think it has some use, right? Like, how do you really claim your values and live them out in the world, that's a useful conversation to have. But when it's like, this has to be applied this way, and we are counter cultural in this way only, it's just more likely that a system would be holding up abuse.

Same thing if there's no legitimate reason to leave, right? I think it's really important to pay attention to how do people in an organization or church speak of people who've left? Do they speak of them at all, right? There's so many churches where if you leave, you're just going to get vanished. That happened to me.

I mean, when I stopped going to the church that my parents, you know, were going to when I was raised in that community and, and I went to college. And then when I moved back to the [00:13:00] area, I didn't go to that church. Nobody ever followed up with me. Like I didn't get those weird manipulative, uh, Hey, let's meet for coffee.

I'm worried about your soul. Cause I haven't seen you in a few weeks. And there's part of that that was, Incredibly painful. I'm like, did you, like, we grew up together. We spent so much time together. You, you just like never, ever thought of me again. Like you were never, like you never reached out. You never wanted to know how I was.

That's, it felt kind of painful. In, in a way, as much as like being chased down and manipulated and like emotionally abused to come back is also harmful. 

Jay Coile: It's always funny how like we, we desperately like talking from like a SBC type of, or SBT, SBC type of mentality. When I was a kid, I remember like, You wanted like souls, like, Oh, everybody comes to church.

We got to save souls, altar call. Like it was like desperate, but you are right. Like when people left, it was like, well, [00:14:00] they're sinning. I mean, they're, you know, God be with them because they're going to hell. And, and of course I'm exaggerating, but like that was there. It makes no sense to like the real gospel that there's this, intense desire for you only to be a part of what we want you to be a part of.

But then if you decide you don't want to be a part of it anymore, like, we don't care. Like, you're almost, like, it's your choice. It's just very odd. 

Emily Maynard: Yeah. And it's because there's no room for nuance in these systems, right? Like if, if relationships are supposed to be black and white, and that is God ordained, and you have no room to question it, then you're going to have really fractured relationships like this.

You're not going to have the desire or compassion to seek out people who maybe think a little bit differently than you, even at the moment. The last thing that I want to mention is sort of this idea of high control performance. So using fear and shame about doubt or questions, these groups often ritualize behavior and the appearance [00:15:00] of compliance.

So even if you have questions, Right? There's no safe place to ask those questions. Even if you, you just sort of have to keep performing modesty or purity or faith or all of these things and there's no real concern for any genuineness. It's, hey, you got to keep performing. If, if you, you know, stop, like, we're gonna have a problem with it.

It's all socially enforced, right? Like, I never had to, nobody ever told me, like, hey, you're being immodest, right? Or I don't even think anybody ever told me you should save sex for marriage. I don't remember any core idea about that. Like, no incident caused that, but I knew those messages. very early without being explicitly told because that was the behavior that was reinforced by my community.

That was the norm and there was no reason or opportunity to ever question any part of it. 

Jay Coile: Well, it's also like when I was a kid and I went to around the pole or see you at the pole, like, I don't think I was told to do that. [00:16:00] Like, I just knew the date and I put the Christian t shirt on with the, you know, the bracelet.

And I thought this is like my witness to my friends who are 13 and 14 and don't care. I want to go back to point one real quick because there's two things going on right now. There's two scandals that point one reminds me of. So there's, there's one right now at a church near me, uh, well in California, Monrovia Fellowship, where the pastor went away.

You know, they, they asked him to leave. I don't know. He went on a leave of absence and then he came back and it was like a really weird, like it was, he said he went away because of inappropriate text messages. We don't really know the whole truth and he's back as a pastor. His name's Albert Tate and I've read a little bit about it and it like seems like super familiar.

It sounds a lot like the Matt Chandler situation, honestly. And like that, when you mentioned that, like that, You know, patterns of interaction, not beliefs, power, control, secrecy, abuse, leadership, hierarchy. Like what, how you described it, like that to me like fits in perfectly with that situation. And then there's another one that popped up.[00:17:00] 

And Johnny, you mentioned this a couple weeks ago, or mentioned it on social media about, I could be saying this wrong. Is it, it's the, is it the IHOP or International House of Prayer? Is that right? with that leader who stepped down and then there was allegations of abuse and they were going to hire a law firm and then they said, Oh, we're going to hire a national law firm.

We're going to hire a local law firm. I don't know why you'd hire a law firm at all. But again, like all of these things continue to happen in these spaces and it's so disheartening that they're just happening. So I guess my question to you is like, Like, what does that do to us? Like, over time, where we just see this repetition of this insidious behavior just being excused away.

Like, what does that do to us? 

Emily Maynard: I know that one impact of it is a lot of people don't feel safe in church, right? The numbers are kind of shocking. The number of young people that don't believe that church has any place in their, in their lives or value. And then the number of people who've been incredibly dedicated to church, who've spent their life in [00:18:00] ministry or Christian organizations or missions who leave usually suddenly.

because there's just no trust that these institutions can really honor the values that they uphold, right? If, if, you know, our faith is about love and justice and making whole and a kingdom of God that is revolutionary and, you know, takes care of the poor and frees the oppressed. But what we see publicly is like, Actually, it's just a bunch of like, dudes who are getting off with their poor behavior and like, then we let them off the hook?

Like, that is not a compelling mission to put your life around. 

Johnna Harris: I mean, that is the pattern for sure. Goodness. Well, I think that we've been kind of toying with this whole conversation surrounding cults in general, right, as a podcast. And a reason that Jay and I are really careful about using that term is [00:19:00] because immediately people will turn off as soon as they hear cult.

Like, I wasn't a part of a cult. I wasn't a part of, like, Daniela came on and talked about being a part of Children of God. Like, I wasn't a part of Children of God. We weren't, or like, we don't have Kool Aid. We're not all wearing White and going to the same place, you know, it's this idea of cults, like you were saying, are these wild examples we have on Netflix documentaries, but really, like you said, and Daniella said, it's a spectrum and Every single organization you're in is on this spectrum, and it's just how far into the spectrum are you?

And I think in some of the categories you just listed, we're way far in. Like, we're deep in the deep end of the cult spectrum. And then some of them maybe we're not as far in, in the spaces that we mostly hear stories out of on this podcast, but Something I find interesting is, in particular, ACT29 [00:20:00] or other evangelical, non denominational churches, maybe SBC, these really predominantly white, non denominational spaces, all kind of have this same pattern that we're seeing come out.

Jay, you just described, it's not Monrovia Fellowship is not predominantly white, but it's Western evangelical, that same structure, same systems. Why are we seeing these same patterns? What is that through line? Can you speak to why we're maybe seeing some of the same stories coming out of these spaces and what the connection is between all of this?

I think 

Emily Maynard: if I were to sort of speak from a Christian perspective, one of the first ideas is that The world is not the way it's supposed to be, that there is some idea that there is moral wrong, right? And Christianity holds that idea, you know, very central. I think the first idea is to like, We say that we recognize that there [00:21:00] is human weakness and there's a possibility of abuse or harm towards each other.

But we don't build structures that actually reflect that possibility when we're talking about accountability. And the thing that makes the difference is power. Who has power and which person's power or which groups of people, how is their power reinforced in an organization? When I, even when I'm working in my clinical work, I, I'm trained to sort of notice the powers that are happening and influencing relationships.

A lot of that is naming some of the powers that I think have influenced Christianity. Things like patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy certainly has influenced historical and current Christianity. And that doesn't mean we need to throw out the Christianity part. It means we need to be very discerning and wise about What is the impact of some of the theological positions we're holding?

And then what is the possible impact of some of the structures that we're having? If your goal is that your church or your missions [00:22:00] organization grows at any cost, who's going to be paying that cost, right? Versus maybe a smaller system where you're not trying to accumulate buildings and resources and land and power and publishing contracts, but maybe you're living a sort of smaller kind of faith.

But we live in a capitalistic society, right, which requires that people accumulate in order to maintain their positions in the world and certainly like pay their employees and things like that, or have a space for ministry. I don't think those things are inherently problematic. I think we just need to keep an eye on them of like, how does patriarchy influence the fact that a lot of these organizations say that only men can be pastors?

Right? Like people can have very different theological positions on that. I want to make that really clear. But I want to say let's also look at the impact and find out what other things what we need to keep in place if we're going to limit certain positions to only certain types of [00:23:00] people. How would we keep an eye on that and make sure it doesn't influence more than it needs to?

Johnna Harris: Yeah, that's something that the further we get into this podcast and learning about evangelicalism, I feel like No one's asking what the impact is, or very few people are asking what the impact is, and very few people with any power or authority in this space are caring about what the impact is. I mean, the podcast is called The Bodies Behind the Bus.

Like, it's known that the impact is souls and human beings being run over by the mission and it's celebrated. That is wicked to me. In my opinion, that's not who God is or what God desires. It's so exhausting and disheartening to feel like the thing that can bring about change is us. that people that have any authority or power actually care about the impact.

And [00:24:00] knowing the deeper we get into this, the less I see people actually caring about impact. But on the flip side, we have more power and agency as individuals than we are taught in these spaces. And educating ourselves and listening and learning from people like you can actually make change. changes from the bottom up, which I think is exciting and hopeful.

So I can get extremely discouraged if I start focusing on the systems in place currently, but then when I start realizing Whoa, if we just mobilized, if we just educated ourselves, if we just learned what power we have and what agency we have in these spaces, some real change could come about. Even if that looks like walking out and taking your money with you, like that is a choice.

And that's a valid choice, in my opinion, in many of these spaces. I would love for you to spend a little bit of time just educating [00:25:00] people on what spiritual abuse is. What is religious trauma? What are some things that. Those of us that are maybe still sitting in churches or sitting underneath leadership can be looking for, as red flags, this is a part two of that question, what are questions that we can ask in those spaces to start sifting through whether or not we are in a toxic space?

Yeah, those 

Emily Maynard: are really. Actually harder questions than you think. I'm just thinking about how much wisdom and attention to your own body and, you know, the voice of spirit it takes to have meaningful relationships with people or to think about joining an organization again after COVID. there's been some harm on an organizational structure that you've witnessed or experienced.

But let me first talk about spiritual abuse. So when I think of spiritual abuse, the way that I use that term, I think of an individual or an organization using power or authority to harm [00:26:00] someone else and then putting God's name on it, right? Claiming that that harm is God ordained, it is God intended, it is right, it is good in God's eyes.

The International Cultic Studies Association. define spiritual abuse as any physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional abuse that takes place in a religious context. That is an incredibly broad, and I think necessarily broad definition, right? That there are multiple types of abuse, and that this could include something that takes place in any religious context, be that a Christian organization, you know, missions, college, school, church, or even a Christian family can have spiritual abuse that impacts it.

I don't remember the second half of your 

Johnna Harris: question 

Emily Maynard: or where I was going to go with that 

Johnna Harris: so we can cut. Where people could be seeing like red flags, what some things are to look for and even what some questions are for leadership that people could ask. And [00:27:00] Also, probably acknowledging that there might not be safety to ask those questions.

And if that's the case, that's your red flag. 

Emily Maynard: Yes, absolutely. I mean, some of it I think you can maybe get by just observing who's even in leadership. Like, who are the people that are sort of publicly involved in an organization? And then you probably might be able to get some knowledge about who's actually running things behind the scenes, because certainly what an organization presents might not always be.

you know, the way an organization is actually run behind the scenes. Especially if you've experienced spiritual abuse in a previous context, I think you get to take your time and really work on healing that, even as or alongside your sort of tiptoeing back into maybe another church setting or another community setting.

The thing that comes to mind as somebody who's I'm certified in EMDR, which is one of the many somatic focused trauma healing modalities, is that trauma often [00:28:00] happens when something happens too fast to us or too much. It's an overwhelming of the nervous system that impacts some of our emotional and psychological and biological processes as humans.

So the thing that, that I talk about always is like trauma healing has to be really slow. because the trauma was too much or too fast. We're not going to go faster than your nervous system can handle because we're trying to build health into this system where there was damage or brokenness. I mean, I always look at who's actually represented in an organization.

For me, you know, my values in theology are that women have just as much possibility of spiritual authority. LGBTQ people can hear the voice of God and lead in powerful and holy contexts. So because that's my theological position, that's what I look for in an organization. I also believe that, you know, Christianity is not limited to white people in its history or in its expression as it should be.

So I [00:29:00] want to see like, where are groups of people really sorting out the difficult work of how do we be humans together? How do we Incorporate scripture or theology into our lives. And that often doesn't look like a big, robust organization with a fancy website and a huge campus and multi millions of dollars of donations.

It's often in these much smaller groups that are kind of harder to find for people who are survivors of this kind of trauma. But, but they are out there and they're worth doing some effort to find. 

Johnna Harris: They're There are a lot of pastors that would say that we're overusing the word trauma for what's happening in a lot of these church contexts, and that people just don't want accountability.

We're seeing therapy language be used in this way. quite a bit in a lot of these systems right now. I would love, could you take a moment and just explain [00:30:00] why it's traumatic to experience spiritual abuse and what that trauma is doing to our bodies when we are experiencing it? 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, and I just want to frame this that as a licensed psychotherapist my training is connected to you know, the American Psychological Association's DSM and the World Health Organization's categorization of certain diseases that are based on symptomology, right?

So whether you, you know, are experiencing an anxiety disorder or depressive disorder or, you know, maybe you are neurodivergent in some way, we know that something has happened and we categorize it by the symptoms. So trauma leaves a specific set of symptoms. The sort of classic or sort of I would say like one previous wave of trauma research and understanding is that trauma is involved in a certain incident that has a certain life threatening component in it.

So that's still a requirement for a PTSD [00:31:00] diagnosis, for example. But there's an amazing researcher, Judith Herman, who really advanced the idea of trauma research over the last few decades, and that she identified that trauma leaves a certain set of symptoms. So she worked primarily with people, women who've experienced domestic violence or sexual assault, right?

And certainly there can be single incidents that are particularly awful. But some of the evidence of trauma shows up because of a pattern of abusive behavior or interactions, a belittling of a person or taking someone too far or not giving them enough. So I would say trauma is just much more complex as a psychological concept than these pastors are probably realizing, right?

And it's also an easy way to like identify and dismiss people. Be like, Oh, that's just your trauma talking, right? Rather than engaging with like, well, what does that actually mean? What would I have to do if I recognized that there was some [00:32:00] validity to people's experiences that might have showed up in a way that even surprised them, right?

I worked with a lot of people who were like, Oh no, my childhood was fine. I'm, I'm good. I just have no idea why I have all these pervasive difficulties in relationships and sexuality and emotions and work and my mental health. And I'm like, well, probably something happened at some point that deserves some attention.

Jay Coile: Wait, now hold up. So you mean to tell me that the pastor that has the six book deal, no, uh, background in any type of trauma work at all, he is not the ultimate authority on trauma and accountability? Like he doesn't have the right to, okay. I mean, that's a, that's a newsflash to me. Cause that's, they might need to hear that.

How do we get that message out to them? 

Emily Maynard: You know, there's a lot of things that I've just determined are no longer a good use of my time. And trying to convince Christian pastors to give up some of their power and authority to actually minister to the wounded and the harmed. 

Jay Coile: It's not. 

Emily Maynard: It's just not happening.

When 

Jay Coile: you said [00:33:00] something, I want you to talk more about like the definition of religious trauma. You also have another definition that I'd love to hear about are adverse religious experiences, which I think that is critical to talk about. But you said something earlier that to me, when you were talking about EMDR therapy, and I'm going to not pronounce, I'm not going to say it right, but you talked about basically getting your system like almost kind of like a reboot or starting from ground zero and building up slowly.

The way you said it. reminds me very much about renewal. Like, like what I really think salvation is about. Like, what Christ really came to do was renew. To bring back, you know, what this earth is supposed to be and the charge is for us to be part of that renewal. And I thought, like, that is like such a beautiful gospel analogy about seeing this person being built back to what they were.

what they always were meant to be. And through that process, it's just beautiful. And like, I just want to take the time and say like, thank you for doing that. [00:34:00] Like, to me, that's such a beautiful thing. to be a part of. I just wanted to comment on that. So, can you talk a little bit about these last, these last two definitions?

Because I think they're important. Adverse religious experiences and religious trauma and what those definitions look like and kind of how they play out. 

Emily Maynard: Yeah. So the adverse religious experiences, this is from the Religious Trauma Institute, which is a group of clinicians and scholars who are researching and kind of helping define and advance the research side of this field.

And adverse religious experiences are any experience of religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual's sense of safety or autonomy or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well being. So getting, we're getting this big picture of really it's.

it's anything that is part of a religious experience that causes harm in some way to an individual. 

Jay Coile: To me, like when I read that one, like, I, I feel like there's a lot of people that could fall into [00:35:00] that bucket initially. Is that a fair assessment? 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I think I would relate it to, to, to this.

You know, we could talk about adverse family experiences or adverse work experiences. It is not unusual that something will happen at some point in one of your relationships or your childhood or, right, even like a healthy marriage or a healthy friendship. has and should have some conflict in it. If you're growing together, there's going to be some point where you have a miscommunication or misunderstanding or different perspective, right, that might cause some friction.

So we're not saying that anything bad that happens causes trauma. We're saying you're allowed to say, Oh, this happened and I didn't like it. And it's something that I had to move on from or negotiate or repair, I think is a really powerful word. So not every adverse religious experience is, or family experience, right, is going to cause trauma.

But when we look at what does cause trauma, it is adverse religious experiences. That's sort of the feeder or the pathway to religious trauma. [00:36:00] And then religious trauma is the physical, emotional, or psychological response to those, again, beliefs, practices, or structures that are experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has a lasting or significant adverse effect on your well being.

Johnna Harris: Some ways that we hear people experiencing that. are parking in a church parking lot and then having a panic attack or having to leave because you're about to vomit during a church service. Like, those are not normal experiences going into a space. That's indication that you've experienced trauma and your body doesn't feel safe here.

Emily Maynard: Right. That's what started happening to me when I was going to another church that, you know, in my 20s that was very much more connected, I would say, like, with you know, openness. And it wasn't ACT29, but I would say it was like a cool church, you know, where people were, you know, nobody dressed up and, and everybody was talking about, you know, being ministering to a city [00:37:00] and had some really good intentions.

You know, women were allowed to be not fully leaders, but like there were a lot more women represented in the hierarchy of the structure. And I started freaking out in church. And I did not know what was happening with my body because cognitively, I was like, I'm fine. This church is a lot better, right, for me than the one I grew up in.

I feel much more safe here intellectually, but I was so disconnected from my body through years of purity culture and, you know, oppression and a lot of adverse religious experiences. It took me a while to even trust that my body's response was valid and that that meant I needed to take a break. And I did get some pushback for that.

I had friends who were like, how dare you? And I was like, I don't, I don't know. I, I can't volunteer and I have to stop sitting in church because I don't, because my body is screaming at me, get out when I'm in that space. And I need to just take time to figure out and to trust that. God would be with me, even if I didn't go to church and even [00:38:00] if I took some time and didn't have an immediate like, Oh, yeah, I'm just going to take two weeks off and heal and then I'll be back.

Don't you worry. Yeah, 

Johnna Harris: I think I can tell that. Within your trauma training, this must be like something therapists learn because my therapist said something very similar to me that you said earlier in this conversation, this idea of the slow work of like building trust back again with yourself. I'll just be candid right now.

Something I'm working on in therapy personally is my brain doesn't want to go so far in my EMDR. Journey. And so I'll tell my therapist, I feel like I'm staring at like a white piece of drywall right now. Like, I don't feel or see anything. It's just not there. And she has been telling me, that's okay. That means your brain's trying to protect you.

And like, that's a good thing. And our job is not to force your brain to comply with this situation. Our job is to Teach your brain that we can trust that this is a safe [00:39:00] place. And that has been so profound for me as a human and realizing all of these ways that even in ministry or spaces that I've entered where I have pushed through boundaries internally to be vulnerable because that was expected of me, where my brain or my body was saying, stop, stop, like, There's not trust here.

And I was pushing through those boundaries. And I don't think that's an uncommon experience for so many of us that are coming from these spaces, especially like the small group dynamic, or there's a plethora, even like meeting with your pastor one on one and them wanting to know deep personal, I'm using air quotes, sin issues or struggles that you have when there isn't earned trust.

I mean, and for us with. A lot of these membership covenant signings, like you're meeting with pastors and having to give your whole life's [00:40:00] testimony and giving away very personal details of yourself without earned trust. So something I really appreciate about what you were saying and also what I'm learning through therapy right now is just as a human engaging with other humans, not expecting anything vulnerable that I haven't earned that trust to hear, and then also giving myself permission when I'm in other spaces to not be over vulnerable and to listen to my body.

And if it says, I don't feel safe, or I don't feel ready to share in this capacity here, then I don't have to. Can you expand on that a little bit? That was a very long statement I just made. But, you know, I just, I see it a lot. I see it a lot. And I'm seeing it a lot, we were speaking before this, in this like coaching space in general, this idea that someone can come in and they're just going to like sift through your trauma and like [00:41:00] fix it.

Can you speak to just What are trust indicators? 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is a verse that I feel like I learned so early, which is, The heart is deceitful above all things. Desperately wicked, who can know it? Right? That verse was pulled out of its historical context and used against me as a tiny little person to tell me that my body was not trustworthy and that I should not pay attention to it and that it was all bad.

So I think one of the first things that you have to do is realize, right, if we want to pull another verse, like you are fearfully and wonderfully made, right? A body that can heal from trauma, a brain that can build new synapses and new neural pathways, a nervous system that can learn to heal, even if you've been through trauma that has lasting effects.

Like, those are powerful, wonderful things about us. You can learn how to not fear your own body. You can learn how to integrate it. [00:42:00] And especially if you've been through trauma or you're getting these like kind of wild signals from your body, right? Like a lot of anger or this deep desire to run away and not pursue any relationships with people anymore.

Like it doesn't mean you have to trust everything your body says, but you're going to have to engage with it. This is where we can be mind, body, and soul. We can connect with like, well, what physical sensations am I feeling right now? What are the thoughts that are happening? And then also still have a way to say, and does this fit with what I want or what I believe is best about my life or what I should do in this situation?

And good trauma therapy, I think, is slow and careful and will be affiliated with some sort of standard or ethical board or some sort of outside source. Again, not perfectly, there's a lot of people who are trained and licensed who still cause harm in their work, but I think it's really important for me to have affiliated myself with specific training to ground my work in specific [00:43:00] contexts that I do believe are valid, you know, scientifically and just fit with my value systems and to keep myself and my work ethically accountable to a license and a board and, you know, consultants and things like that that I work with to make sure that my work isn't.

isn't perpetuating systems of adverse therapeutic experiences that would cause like therapy trauma or something like that. 

Jay Coile: But I go back to like, like how you continue to say like slow and grows and builds and like, you know, I, I've always been interested in the capitalistic nature of Christianity in America.

I don't think I, I, it's something that I. I feel like we need to definitely explore more of how it influences the way that we not only interact with our faith, but how we interact with others and our expectations for growth. And, and like what you're describing sounds more Christ like to me, like slow, you know, there, like, well, I always go back to like, when Jesus was with people, it's not like Jesus was, you know, Jesus wasn't [00:44:00] solving things in seconds.

He was having conversations with people about things. And, you know, we get a small glimmer of Christ's life in the pages of the Gospels. Who knows what else that looked like on, you know, he's with these people forever, long talks and walks and whatever he might did, but did during that time, but it was slow.

And I appreciate the way You mentioned how this should be approached. And I feel like that to me is just so healing and it's something to really rest in. And like, when we talk about like coaches or people out there that are looking for, I guess, a way to help, you know, I would caution people to say like, If it's not about your well being and growth and about taking time to know you and understand you and like what Emily was saying, backed by something that sounds more legitimate or something you can grasp a hold of that's been done before, it's probably not the best bet to engage with those types of individuals.

Not meaning that they don't [00:45:00] mean well, it just, to me, it feels like it just really falls into the same camp of where we used to come from. I would also ask Emily, like, What would you ask if people are in this place right now and they feel like, hey, this is resonating with me and I want to try to find some help?

Like, what are some ways that they can go out trying to find someone who is qualified, licensed, that specifically deals with maybe religious trauma or spiritual trauma? What's some good questions to ask when they're talking to therapists or people that could potentially help them? What's some things to look for?

Anything like that would be helpful and insightful for us. 

Emily Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I want to say this, knowing that there's so many inadequacies in our health care and mental health care system and in our capitalistic system, right? That really prevent people from having access to healing and a, you know, stable, sustained, sustained life where they can take the time and energy to heal.

So all this comes with like a deep sadness [00:46:00] about that reality and also hope that you might be in a place right now where you can take some steps. And one of the first resources that I think is so important is educating yourself on things like the Religious Trauma Institute. They have a great website that provides more information and some quality research about this.

And the second resource is called the Reclamation Collective. They're a U. S. based organization, a non profit, and they have a therapist directory of people who are, you know, qualified as counselors or therapists or, you know, specifically affiliated practitioners across the states who have some training or focus on religious trauma.

And they also offer support groups. I think their next round of support groups starts in January. I mean, I think so often we're, we're broken in community ways, but that means we're also heal in community ways. And they have some, you know, low cost or more affordable support groups to really walk people through a lot of these, you know, How do you heal from some of these [00:47:00] experiences that you've had?

So please check out the Reclamation Collective. They're amazing. I'm so happy about that team and what they're doing. And the second research specifically for counseling across the U. S. is called Open Path Collective. And that is a directory of qualified therapists and practitioners who are advertising sliding scale or low fee for people who have financial need.

So there is a search option on there where you can identify, you know, people who have specific training in religious trauma. That's kind of the term that I see most often. There's not as many opportunities to search for like a deconstruction therapist. Search for religious trauma and you'll be more likely to find somebody who's educated about adverse religious experiences, the impacts of purity culture.

those sort of things. And there are some practitioners who offer sliding scale services or really are trying to make this more accessible or affordable. 

Johnna Harris: That's amazing. I love that. 

Jay Coile: I, uh, I pulled up the open path. I'm going to look at it, but I was going to ask too, like, I know sometimes like people might be [00:48:00] ashamed of talking about some of their religious situations that have happened to them, whether they think they're traumatic or not, but they realized, Hey, I had a really bad situation go on my church and it's really impacting me.

So if you're just with a therapist, you find. Uh, and you like them, but you don't know if they specialize in religious trauma. Is there a way to, like, start that conversation with them to where you feel safe, you know, to say these things? And then also, uh, like, do you have any, like, questions to ask therapists about, you that you may suggest for those that might be struggling to not find a specific religious trauma therapist, but they find a great therapist they really like, but they want to maybe talk about some of these topics.

Emily Maynard: Yeah, I'm going to pull a question from Casey Davis, who's Struggle Care and Domestic Blisters on TikTok and Instagram. And she said, great thing to ask a clinician is, even if they advertise themselves as a Christian counselor or Christian therapist, do you believe that it is possible? for someone to heal some [00:49:00] of these symptoms without just a religious.

context. So I think that's, there's some really amazing practitioners who are people of faith themselves, but that they would give you quality psychological or trauma care and not just a faith based healing option. So that's a really good question to ask, like what, and then I would say one of the most powerful things you can do in therapy is take ownership for what you want out of it.

A therapist can't read your mind and guess what you need in therapy. So I love it when I work with people who come to me and they're like, They know what they want to work on, and I encourage people, a therapist can take what you ask, and then they will either say, you know, I'm not qualified in that, but I'm going to look into it, or I'm not qualified in that, let me get you to somebody who is, or let's take it as we go.

And if we run into roadblocks, you know, where I'm not understanding your experience, or what you need, then, um, I, as a clinician, will, again, get more education or find somebody who can help with that [00:50:00] particular area. So, I think what's great is this field is growing, but there's not, again, there's certainly places where, you know, the only practitioners that I know of in a certain area are full or, um, there, you know, there are no practitioners in certain states.

So hard. 

Jay Coile: It's just so sad. It's so sad. The, the health system, I mean, it's great, but it sucks too. It sucks that, like People should be able to access m everybody should be able to access mental health. It should be available in all plans, and for those that don't have plans, we should find a way to be able to get that, that help for them.

But it's not that, that case in America. It is that, like, in other places too. So, go ahead and change that for us, Emily, and let us know when it's done so that we can talk to everyone about it. 

Emily Maynard: Perfect. Well, you know, a big part of my own healing has been realizing that I am nobody's savior, and that I cannot fix all systemic problems.

Like, I gotta work in my little pond. I'm going to be a small fish in my small pond with other fish my same 

Johnna Harris: size. I do have, [00:51:00] I think, maybe a final question or we can, we can keep going. But we have a lot of pastors who listen to this podcast, a lot. And as a therapist who sees a lot of people with religious trauma, adverse religious experiences, What is some encouragement or.

I'll use a churchy word, exhortation, that you would give to church leaders right now, because you're seeing the, you're, I mean, way more than Jay and I, you're seeing the effects of religious trauma. And as pastors, I think many of them, first off, thank you for listening. If you do listen, I think education and listening is key to starting to change the way that we exist within these systems, but Also, there are some things that may be good for them to hear from a therapist's perspective.

Emily Maynard: Yeah, two things come to mind. I think is one is be willing to do your own [00:52:00] work and find a context where you can step aside from the past or identity and into your own role as a human person who has flaws, who has harms, who has your own hurts. And that's it. Don't think that you, just because of your position, are exempt from causing harm to others or experiencing harm from others.

You are still a human and you deserve a private, confidential, therapeutic space to work those things out. You will be a better leader if you are willing to do your own work and to keep doing your own work, right? Pastors have really hard jobs. Like, you are there at people's moments of greatest joy and excitement.

And also you're walking with people through so much pain. And you deserve a space, not where you're just sort of, I don't know, like applauded and celebrated at all times, but a space where you get to be deeply human and vulnerable with the cost of this work on your own body and on your own [00:53:00] spirit. And the second thing that comes to mind is like, be willing to start deconstructing your own defensiveness and just listen to people.

I think so much of what is invalidating to people who have experienced religious harm is that people don't believe them. And that creates the secondary layer of panic and fear and disconnection and avoidance and all of those kind of traumatic symptoms that can show up in people's lives. It doesn't mean that you have to believe that their story is the same as your story, but develop the experience and the practice of holding other people's stories well, even if you have your own different experience, right?

Like, nobody is faking religious trauma. Something happened. And you might not be the cause of it, and you might not need to understand exactly what happened with a journalistic viewpoint to show up with empathy and kindness and connection. [00:54:00] And that is so much more important than being like, well, you know, this person probably didn't mean that.

Johnna Harris: Oof, yes, that We see it so much and it is so, it's re traumatizing to feel like someone wants all the answers in order to see you. And so that's something that probably if you're listening, you're going to relate to so much and almost every single phone call that I have with someone who's calling to see if they want to.

tell their story on the podcast. A conversation I have with them is, you're going to like be really focused on something like, the sky was blue that day, and I need you to know the sky was blue that day because the person, the pastor, is going to say it was raining, but go look at the weather report. It was blue.

And I'm like, it literally doesn't matter if you're wrong on this. It doesn't matter if it was a hurricane outside. What happened to you is not okay. But we're so used to being invalidated [00:55:00] because we get one little thing wrong or don't remember correctly. And the reality is, is that all of those details don't matter.

What matters is that you were hurt by someone who was supposed to be a shepherd for you. And like, we can bear witness to that together and we can hold that and we can grieve that without having to do Like you said, I really like that, this journalistic viewpoint thing where we have to parse out who was more wrong in the situation.

Like that's, we don't have to do that. Christians don't have to do that. Pastors especially don't need to do that. So I appreciate you saying that. 

Jay Coile: These are the types of conversations that we need to be having more often as people of faith. And you know, it's encouraging, it's encouraging to know that people like you have invested the time to get the education needed to, to work in this space with a heart to just be open and be there to help for the people's healing journey.

[00:56:00] Like that to me is just such a, it brings so much hope. And I hope, I think there's other people out there that are in a similar place where they're like, I want to help. And I'm thinking about doing this. I would encourage others that if you feel that pull to, to do this work, you know, go back to school, you know, or if you're in school, like look to see what it takes to get this, uh, to get the requirements to be, uh, you know, whether it be a licensed therapist or.

a psychologist, whatever it may be, because we do need more people of faith to step into these spaces and to be part of this process, because I do think it's critical for us as the future of the church to have more of these conversations. So thank you. I mean, just thank you for what you do. And, uh, thank you for your time.

I think it was great. 

Emily Maynard: Thanks for having me.[00:57:00] 

Jay Coile: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the speaker's own and not those of this podcast. This content is presented for informational and educational purposes that constitute fair use, commentary, or criticism. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestion, or correction of errors.