Your Therapist Needs Therapy
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Your Therapist Needs Therapy
Your Therapist Needs Therapy 20 - Sex Ed after Purity Culture with Erica Smith
Jeremy is joined this week by sex educator Erica Smith. Erica runs the excellent Purity Culture Dropout program, and offers individual coaching or professional consultation. Jeremy and Erica talk about how growing up in purity culture is harmful, how the religious right is hypocritical, and why comprehensive sex ed is so important. Another shout-out to rescue animals, because truly they’re the best.
You can find Erica’s work here, and follow her on Instagram here.
Jeremy’s work and other media can be found at Wellness with Jer.
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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.
If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.
Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Erica Smith - Transcript
Attendees
Erica Smith, Jeremy Schumacher
Transcript
This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.
Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and Welcome to another edition of your therapist needs therapy podcast, where mental health professionals, get together and talk about their mental health journeys. I'm Jeremy Schumacher, your host, licensed marriage and family therapist Erica Smith who is a certified sex educator. Erica, thanks for joining me.
Erica Smith: You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.
Jeremy Schumacher: I'm excited to talk to you. one of my specialties is religious trauma.
Jeremy Schumacher: An instagram and about the Purity culture.
Erica Smith: Yes, I am.
Jeremy Schumacher: Dropout program that you run.
Erica Smith: You specialize in religious trauma because I feel like it's difficult to find The work with me in tandem with therapy and sometimes there's depending on where they live. It's really hard to find someone to do that. Specific kind of work.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. it's definitely niche like I'm in Wisconsin, I believe I'm the only therapist.
Erica Smith: Yes.
Erica Smith: Yeah, of course. So I've been a sex educator for my entire career so that means that in college, I studied women's and gender Studies. I
Erica Smith: Knew, sex education wasn't like a job that they tell you you can be when you're a kid Especially not when I was young, it wasn't like a career path that I sell clearly laid out in front of me, but I did find that I was very passionate about the topic of reproductive health and access to reproductive health. So it just kind of fell into place that I started my work first in abortion care, doing the counseling and education sessions for patients at the clinic and eventually I began working in a sex ed HIV prevention program with youth and then I discovered that right in the Philadelphia area, which is where I am. There is a graduate
Erica Smith: RAM for sex education and sex therapy which I started that program in 2004, it wasn't very widely known at the time. And so that's when I got my master's in sex education and I have just always continued to be very very into this work the way that I became.
Erica Smith: Focused on folks growing up in purity culture who came out of purity culture is because I just saw the need, m one of those people. I was not raised in purity culture but I watched it really mess people up from the outside and I watched the way the Religious Right has a strong grip on politics in America and how that affects funding for sexual health, how that affects policy and for years, I was working in a funded HIV prevention program and we were losing funding to abstinence only programs. So my viewpoint was as an outsider being …
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: This is probably messing people up a lot and then I knew for a fact that abstinence only education didn't work and that was a product of, the religious right? So I began asking people.
00:05:00
Erica Smith: A few years ago, how they grew up in regards to sex education? Did they grow up in what? They would consider a very high control religion and in purity culture, and how did it affect them? And I got such a strong response from people that I immediately was like, I see such like a gap in sex education. That's tailored for these folks for people who might be adults that feel really ashamed that they don't know this stuff.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: So that's my motivation. And so now I've been doing purity culture specific work for a little over four years now
Jeremy Schumacher: And growing up in that I grew up even evangelical. So definitely we weren't what sex education and I'll put that in quotes. I grew up with was anatomically incorrect and full of scare tactics and…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: really unhelpful stuff and there wasn't any sort of formal sex, Ed, I think that was fourth or fifth grade And I think we only got it because one girl got her period and our whole class worked really hard to figure out…
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: what might all was because none of us knew what it was. It was like This great mystery in our little evangelical Lutheran school so I think I Yeah,…
Erica Smith: That must have been scandalous.
Jeremy Schumacher: this part, I look back on it like this.
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: Poor 11 year old, who was the first person to get her period and…
Erica Smith: Mmm.
Jeremy Schumacher: caused all this ruckus in our class? But I think it wasn't part of the curriculum. I think it was just because our class freaked out about making this huge mystery out of it but I look back on it and I know how unhelpful it is. And now as I've Started and deconstructed myself. it is this fascinating thing where you have these people who
Jeremy Schumacher: are fully grown adults, they're in relationships, many of them have children and they're just still grappling with this idea of even the difference between, I don't believe that stuff anymore, but so much of that purity culture stuff is just ingrained
Erica Smith: Yes, and it lives deep in their bodies.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. I talk about big T drama and little tea drama a lot and how it's almost always like a little tea trauma that…
Erica Smith: .
Jeremy Schumacher: I like to record it. today, it's been a day for me with just Technology.
Erica Smith: Just enough to distract. Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: I have ADHD too so it's just enough to throw me off. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: It's fascinating. I think seeing how people Change their belief systems but then the idea of what they hold on to like you talked about, it's in their bodies. This little tea trauma to me we don't necessarily identify it as PTSD. A lot of people aren't necessarily looking at it as my church,…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: harmed me. But those messages around putting monogamy in a privileged space putting hetero relationships and a privileged space. those things are hard to let go of because you're not necessarily aware that …
Erica Smith: Yes, yes and…
Jeremy Schumacher: I've been indoctrinated into this thing.
Erica Smith: just the overall sense of sex, being a very scary, bad thing. When I feel like My work so much of my work is like,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm
Erica Smith: giving people the info that none of it's a scary as you were taught you were intentionally taught to fear something that is such a normal healthy part of your Personhood. And it is so hard for people to let go of those fears. When those fears for many of them started from their earliest memories fear of their own bodies especially the opposite gender all of that stuff.
Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, yeah and the messaging obviously varies I think depending on what High control or just regular religious group you're coming from. But even I think in Non-religious Sex, ed there are these huge gaps, one of them. My favorite topics to bring up when I have informed people is what health for a hymen looks like because there's this huge patriarchical b******* around it.
Erica Smith: Yes. No. that's,
Jeremy Schumacher: And it's not based on medical science, it's not based on anything. And so even people who aren't coming from religious backgrounds or getting weird kind of I don't know,…
Erica Smith: It's so true. And I have to say that in my work with folks,…
Jeremy Schumacher: skewed information.
Erica Smith: I do not just a lot of educating of the things they learned from their religious backgrounds, but also from the crap that pop culture throws out about sex. there's so much misinformation everywhere that even if you weren't raised in a religious environment, you probably come to believe a lot of things about sex that are just plain untrue or really skewed. So that misinformation is when I work with people it's not just correcting necessarily that the church stuff, it's everything.
00:10:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah and that misinformation is weird how I think ubiquitous it is.
Erica Smith: Very much.
Jeremy Schumacher: Right. I grew up Fundy. So I got a bad information but once getting out of the church still seeing how many people have kind of This incorrect information and around losing your virginity or…
Erica Smith: Okay.
Jeremy Schumacher: around sexual health, or how Sdis work. there's so much bad information that is being disseminated to people through,…
Erica Smith: So true.
Jeremy Schumacher: not like a very formalized system.
Erica Smith: And for that reason, when I work with folks closely, I often say to them, even though you were raised evangelical, you probably now know so much more about sex than the average American person that wasn't because you intentionally sought it out and you intentionally set and thought through your sexual values and thought about what you want to know and you made the effort to get that information. Whereas I think if you would just stop any old guy on the street and Tell me the truth about the hymen, tell me a little bit about sexual communication, tell me how, the morning after pill works I don't think, it's gonna be Late Night TV shows where they just put a microphone in someone's face and see how bad. They are third grade science.
Jeremy Schumacher: Right.
Erica Smith: You know what's gonna happen. So sometimes the people that have to intentionally deconstruct and find that information they end up so much more informed than the average person that's in the dating world.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think it's interesting, I talk about deconstruction as A break with a belief system or pulling on a thread around doctrine or dogma. And then deconversion is the process. After you've deconstructed of all that, stuff that you kind of absorbed as a sponge, as a little kid, your brain, just soaked it all up. And it wasn't explicitly stated sex for me growing up was just a taboo topic. not only did I not get education, it was just like a blank space like We don't talk about it and…
Erica Smith: Yep.
Jeremy Schumacher: so you pick up all this shame and guilt but nobody's saying you should feel guilty about this. It's that implication or that implied kind of thing that you absorb of this is not safe to talk about.
Erica Smith: Yep. And that message, the silence it's a very strong message.
Jeremy Schumacher: And then you get the weird purity culture values of Chewed up bubble gum,…
Erica Smith: Yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: a rose, petals, or tennis shoes that have been worn or…
Erica Smith: the cup of water.
Jeremy Schumacher: you…
Jeremy Schumacher: all these. I'm just triggering a bunch of people right now.
Erica Smith: Right? The cup of water that's been spitting by every kid in the room.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yeah. there's obviously a patriarchy in there, there's all this and Evangelical fundamentalism. the Abrahamic religions are patriarchical. By default,…
Erica Smith: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: That's the point. So the sex Ed then gets really murky for This idea we're not helping people who were assigned, female at birth understand their bodies. And we're not helping my experience as someone…
Erica Smith: No.
Jeremy Schumacher: who identifies as male men. Don't benefit either unless they're put in a position of power. and a lot of guys aren't they're supposed to be. And so For me working with guys on it it's been really interesting…
Erica Smith: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: because they have this idea of I'm supposed to know all this stuff I'm supposed to be making the decisions and I don't have any information to make an informed decision.
Erica Smith: Yeah, I have a lot more male clients than I did, when I started this particular facet of work. And I'm so glad that more. And more guys are coming to me for this specific kind of education. And I know that, Women or female assigned, people, and queer people. They bear the brunt of purity culture, but it is not good for anybody. And, the men I work with a lot of them have been,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: so shamed about just absolutely Regular old healthy sexual functioning like desire, fantasy masturbation, like, all of that stuff. And a lot of them also feel like they are In danger of harming women, just by being attracted to them. And that is something I just get so upset about
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. and I think for a lot of people like doing their own education, learning about things like consent and growing in their own knowledge around, it is really great but it can get really skewed and messed up in your head. When you haven't totally deep programmed,…
00:15:00
Erica Smith: Yep. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: some of that that's a big purity culture thing for guys, just to bounce your eyes away from something that stimulating.
Erica Smith: totally.
Jeremy Schumacher: And so Then a topic, consent gets all messy in your head. If you haven't challenged hey This idea wasn't based on anything like that was never helpful.
Erica Smith: I've worked with men who are, in their 40s and they're like, I don't understand how do I interact with a woman in a social setting if I noticed, she's attractive, What's not creepy? she gonna notice if I notice her and it just makes me really sad that this wasn't something that could be learned through just average teenage socialization that it had to be so controlled that.
Jeremy Schumacher: Right.
Erica Smith: By the time somebody's deconstructing it three decades later there. they're just baffled by stuff that, a lot of people take for granted
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah and I would say even earlier for a lot of people when they kind of start getting that body awareness around five or six and they are aware that hey I could touch my genitals and…
Erica Smith: Uh-huh. Yeah,…
Jeremy Schumacher: something happens. It's not sexual at that age…
Erica Smith: it's just we know when something soothing
Jeremy Schumacher: but a lot of
Jeremy Schumacher: And a lot of that gets shamed a lot of that is these huge crisis or it gets Put into a box and…
Erica Smith: Yeah. Forever.
Jeremy Schumacher: you're not allowed to talk about it ever and that sticks with people for a long time.
Erica Smith: I'm sure we hear a lot of the same stories about, the time I was scolded or actually physically abused because I was doing something that I now understand was a normal part of healthy development. For sexual development.
Jeremy Schumacher: So Right? You're not being raised in a high control religious setting. What was it like for you, when you kept hearing, this was this around some of the political stuff where, the push for row turning overturning row, became a bigger deal? Or Why do these people keep talking about? Like this because, I think purity culture sounds so ridiculous.
Erica Smith: It does.
Jeremy Schumacher: when you're not raised in it,
Erica Smith: So the way I'll just give you a little bit of background on how my family is. I describe us as casually Christian,…
Jeremy Schumacher: sure.
Erica Smith: in the American corporatized we love Christmas at Easter I would get a big basket of candy but we didn't go to church. we never went to church occasionally. We'd go to church on Christmas Eve and that's because it was like, the lights in the candles and it felt very festive. But I wasn't raised to fear God,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: I had none of that and so that was something that I didn't.
Erica Smith: Fully understand how that affected people until I started having these conversations even just at the beginning of my work with people raised in purity culture. at that point, a sex educator of nearly 20 years. I knew enough about sex, education to be able to, assess…
Jeremy Schumacher: Right.
Erica Smith: what information was needed, and give it to people in a really sensitive way. But I have learned so much about The things that go on in high control religions in cults, many people self-describe as having been raised in a cult. And I tell people every time I work with someone I'm like There's nothing I can hear about sexuality. That shocks, me, or is that's going to give me a startle. I've heard it all.
Erica Smith: I'm very good at a poker face but the things that folks tell me about their religious upbringings or things they heard at church or things that they were told to believe I cannot stop being shocked by that honestly, there will come a time when I'm sure that it's also just …
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: Yeah, I've heard that before, but every once in a while, I hear something new and I'm like Holy s***, it is such a different world than the one. I was raised in. And it's so clear to me how abusive it is to children, to teach them to just constantly be in fear. That they are essentially never good enough and that they are basically not s***. I didn't know I was like a 40 year old woman when I started doing work with people raised in purity culture and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: I didn't know that's what it was like. I learned so much from my clients
00:20:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: And my own personal deconstruction, I always say started when I was 10 just took 20 years to actually finally formalize, but it was one of those things for me that fear of hell which you was taught to me as a little kid kept me in it for a long time and…
Erica Smith: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: then having my own children was like, I'm not doing that to them.
Erica Smith: He?
Jeremy Schumacher: There is I'm a psychologist. I been a marriage therapist.
Erica Smith: That's what? I've heard that story that exact thing from one of my closest friends, who has become my friend in recent years and the cornerstone of her deconstruction was her first baby and looking at the baby and being like, I'm supposed to teach you that you are. Essentially worthless. I just can't do that to a baby.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, and so I think it's fascinating to kind of see, culturally the big step away from church and then also, when you get to work with people on such a personal level like hearing some of their own personal journeys. and stepping away, I love that, there are people who are working with this and seeing that it's a problem that weren't raised in it because I do think there's benefit to having the lived experience and…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: I also think getting that outsider perspective is insanely helpful for people.
Erica Smith: Yes, I will fully admit that. until I started doing this work, I didn't Understand what people went through and I am so. Empathetic towards folks who, were raised with this information or indoctrinated even as adults. when I was younger, I think that it was easy to laugh off Jesus freaks, it'd be like, Yeah, those are the Christian kids. They're weird.
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Erica Smith: And I never thought much about them. I just knew that I was pretty from an early age from my Adolescence, I was very social justice oriented and
Erica Smith: I just didn't understand a lot of what I was seeing, the religious right do as a young person. but it was so easy to think of everyone in that category is they're so different for me, they're weird. They're the weird Jesus people that we had some families like that in my town. And now I'm able to just be I have so much empathy for everyone…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: who was indoctrinated, this, even though I was always a target of I'm like a queer person. I was a woman who worked in abortion care. I like to tell the story that When 9/11 happened and Jerry, Falwell, blamed lesbians feminists abortion providers, I was all three at the same time.
Erica Smith: And I was working in an abortion clinic on 9/11.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: So, I would have been the target of the hatred of the judgment. And now I only have so much love and care for the people who had this experience and my clients and everyone who's come to my work or some of the most Badass compassionate brave people I've ever met and I will never have to personally understand what it is like to deconstruct your whole value system. I don't. And so i'm constantly in awe of the people I work with and I get very emotional talking about it because I'm like, They're just the most incredible, brave thoughtful, brilliant people. And you've all had to go through so much more than I can even conceive of personally.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think Jeremy Falwellza a whole rabbit hole that I don't want to go to. I had a guest on early in the podcast who was raised Baptist and went to Liberty University and talks about the numerous scandals. I'd like just the crazy amount of cognitive dissonance for people who are like putting those people on a pedestal.
Erica Smith: yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: But it's fascinating because a little bit you've been a target for the religious, Forever, your whole career and…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: and probably honestly just by being female. but it's also seeing I think how society has grown more accepting as a whole. I would say. And yet, they're recourse, the political pushback against that. I never quite have words for it. it's fascinating and…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: also very depressing at the same time of Trans kids growing up in this day and age have so many more resources available to them and…
00:25:00
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: also it's super unsafe for them it's this weird like limbo. I think both extremes are present constantly for them.
Erica Smith: Very much. I would have never imagined, as a teenager or as a young adult ever seeing the Roe v Wade, decision be taken away in my lifetime. I wasn't aware of all of the forces that have been working on that so hard. and I find that when I talk to clients who are not just deconstructed but are very very aware of how The religious right has been intentionally motivating and mobilizing generations of young people to get to the place we are now. it's scary to me that I'm just figuring this out because I was on the outside but those of you raised in it or yeah this was always the long game.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it's interesting because you talked a couple times about the group dynamic and in my work. I talked very explicitly about that's what religion is like. It's purely in group dynamics. It's a cognitive bias we all have our brain does it for us. It just categorizes people and that's what organized religion preys on is that in group out group, even like I say, I was raised fundamentalist,…
Erica Smith: Of course.
Jeremy Schumacher: but that's not the word we used to describe ourselves when I was growing up. I was like, we're not as crazy as those other Christians down the street.
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: We're the good ones. So, there's in group out group within that dynamic and then there's in group and out group for believers and unbelievers. And all of these things stack up. Which is where I think I talk about it as a cult Christianity is a cult.
Erica Smith: The biggest one. Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: It just is the biggest historically, most successful one, but all those control behaviors are still there.
Erica Smith: Yes, I learned so much about religion all the time? I wasn't raised in it so I'm all so not any kind of theologian or scholar. This is not my area of expertise but I was shocked when I learned not that long ago that evangelicals think Catholics are not the best Christians or that they're not real Christian. I was like,…
Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, I was
Erica Smith: wait in out group thinking, you're all the same. Still like they're all Christians.
Jeremy Schumacher: They're all Christians. No, I was genuinely. This is an actual quote, when I senior of high school, I went to a Lutheran high school. I took a philosophy class which looking back on it, a bit of a joke at a religious institution, but our instructor said that his personal opinion was the Pope was the biblical predicted Antichrist and…
Erica Smith: Wow.
Jeremy Schumacher: You look back on that stuff. that's but yeah, the in group out group dynamics are very strong and they think it works to control people who are in the group and it keeps people who are out of the group out. So, somebody like you who's not racing religion isn't aware of this long game or how the Religious, Right? And the Federalist Society had been so intertwined for years, where it in group of Christian.
Erica Smith: Yeah. Yes,…
Jeremy Schumacher: These things are known and celebrated.
Erica Smith: it is. I am constantly learning things against my will about
Erica Smith: Those.
Jeremy Schumacher: so in your work, how do you kind of balance that gentleness of, these people were indoctrinated into it and not their fault like their victims here, and also work against things like, disinformation, or against people who are Misinformed or have actively buried their head into the sand around topics like abortion.
Erica Smith: that's such a great question. I hope I'm going to give either right answer to the question. I mean, I
Erica Smith: I think I've always been skilled at working with folks who were very different from me. And I say that because for 17 years, I worked specifically with young people who were in the Philadelphia Juvenile justice system. So I had a very different life than a youth who was born and raised in the criminal justice system and has family criminal justice system involvement. And so my work with those youth I was able to be just super compassionate and understanding Even though I didn't share their experience and I feel like that translated very well to then working with people who were raised in high control religions because it's like I didn't come from this system. I can see it clearly from the outside. And so I want to be able to help you
00:30:00
Erica Smith: I feel like I lost the train of thought about the second part of your question, when you said something about, people who have their head in the sand about certain issues,
Jeremy Schumacher: Just balancing.
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: I think the empathy of people…
Jeremy Schumacher: who have been, victimized but also needing to take a firm line on misinformation or
Erica Smith: Yeah, yeah.
Erica Smith: okay, okay. the way that I have come to see this work is to me anytime that I am welcoming and kind and compassionate to somebody who is hurt by high control religion. I feel like I'm
Erica Smith: pushing against that system. It's like, I get to take all of the people that were harmed in some way and be like, come to me and I can help you figure things out. And so even if and I have had clients who, still have some Beliefs that are more conservative than mine and that never affects how I work with them because I'm not out here, trying to make clones of my belief system. I don't even share my belief system really widely. I'm here to get people to
Jeremy Schumacher:
Erica Smith: continue to think, critically for themselves about the topic of sexuality, and people that I work with land, all over the place, they land all over the map. And for some people, they are still like, I'm a conservative guy. I don't believe in this. I kind of get uncomfortable when women do this, and I'm not here to change. I'm not here make I feel or to turn you into some ultra left atheist, I want to help you where you're at and give you the space to think critically and give you some of the tools to think critically. And so, yeah, I am perfectly comfortable working with people who's beliefs, don't echo my own, who still feel pretty attached to some of them, but I will say that most folks don't arrive at my work unless they've already done a fair bit of
Erica Smith: Moving to the left in the first place. Otherwise, they'd be like,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Check.
Erica Smith: No.
Jeremy Schumacher: And I think I don't know owning my own business, as a sole practitioner like you do a little bit of that self filtering with your client base.
Erica Smith: For sure.
Jeremy Schumacher: That's helpful for everyone. I think.
Jeremy Schumacher: I don't want to gloss over some things that I think My original background is licensed is marriage of family therapy, that's what I was trained in and then the religious trauma piece on top of it. But you said something earlier that I do want to circle back…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: because I wanted to talk about it today which is just that abstinence only sex Ed does not work and…
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: like you said it and I was like Yes I know all that research correct. But let's circle back just for people who maybe aren't in the profession or don't know some of this stuff like Why can we say that so clearly and…
Erica Smith: Yeah, so there have been decades to study the effects of it and…
Jeremy Schumacher: confidently as a established fact?
Erica Smith: longitudinal studies have been done on the affectedness of abstinence, only education in preventing unwanted sexual health outcomes. So in preventing people from acquiring STIs, or from becoming pregnant, when they didn't intend to, and the results show that when we have given people absence only education, if it delays their sexual debut, it's by a teeny, tiny amount. And then when folks do become sexually active, they lack the knowledge and the skills to do any sort of meaningful prevention when it comes to their health. So the data is out there, the studies are out there. This isn't just my opinion,
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. and that just across the board outcomes, our worst. So how they personally feel about their sex lives,…
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: how they feel like they're able to have healthy sex lives in the future, Sdis unwanted pregnancies like pick a data point and the outcome is worth with abstinence only education.
Erica Smith: Yes, and I think it's worth pointing out that some of The purity culture beliefs that undergird abstinence only education they end up in the public schools because anytime a school adopts, an abstinence only education program In the religious that's really rooted in Christianity, it's rooted in the pushing of that into public schools and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: the little activities you and I talked about a moment ago, the tape and the water, and the rose petals and all those happen in public schools all the time. So, when I hear those stories, it's not just like this happened to youth group,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Erica Smith: it's like that happened and so junior high.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and it's bizarre, I think. we're getting off topic a little bit, but as somebody who's deconstructed, I think this is all fascinating. it's people look back to the early founders and they're look, we're Christian nation, which is wildly inaccurate. But some of the early founders,…
00:35:00
Erica Smith: He?
Jeremy Schumacher: William Penn You're from Pennsylvania was a Quaker. And he was a weird repressed, sexual psycho, he was making graham crackers and bran oatmeal so that he wouldn't have his sexual urges anymore, like he thought eating a bland diet would…
Erica Smith: Yep.
Jeremy Schumacher: which is why we still have Quaker oats like that's where that comes from and I think people look at that and then they connect to the present day and see it's always been there. But those are not connected data points.
Erica Smith: No.
Jeremy Schumacher: A lot of this stuff started getting pushed in the 1950s.
Erica Smith: And then an increased under Reagan and…
Jeremy Schumacher: World War Two.
Erica Smith: when the AIDS crisis happened and Became supercharged into the purity movement, then and the 90s.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and Reagan had, known you Genesis Cherry Falwell and…
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: all sorts of people in there working with them. to make this issue very political and also religiously devoid of science.
Erica Smith: Absolutely.
Jeremy Schumacher: There's so much hypocrisy, I think, for people who aren't raised in religion, they have such a hard time like seeing any sort of consistency because we're gonna be anti-abortion, but then we're also going to not support free school,…
Erica Smith: if our healthcare any kind of subsidy for maternity leave Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: lunches. We're not going to support maternity leave. We're not going to support Right.
Jeremy Schumacher: yeah and so it was this big political push that took religion and used it as a propaganda tool to Motivate people. I don't know.
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: It's very bizarre. Even as a I was a liberal Christian as before I fully deconstructed, right? I just kept moving further and further left because I was working in the psychology field seeing this is hurting people. I can't support why submit to your husbands from the New Testament.
Erica Smith: He?
Jeremy Schumacher: That's bad. I'm a marriage therapist needs.
Jeremy Schumacher: Cognitive dissonance there's so many ways,…
Erica Smith: And …
Jeremy Schumacher: you're taught to just gloss over that.
Erica Smith: this is something I think about. So you as a mental health provider it must be so Frustrating or maddening to see? How, sometimes those wives that were taught to obey their husbands end up in Christian counseling with, a licensed mental health. Practitioner who tells them to just obey harder?
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, no and even I started my career when I was still a Christian and I was at a Christian counseling place. And I was often we can't pray with our clients without their consent and…
Erica Smith: .
Jeremy Schumacher: everyone else was like Yes we can and it was no gang. that's unethical. we can't do that. And they were like we're going to…
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: because God will protect us. So, I was again, very firmly, liberal progressive on that side of things. Like I said, I think my help drama kept me in the religion far longer than I believed it, but it was one of those things where that's a safe place. I'm only gonna go work with a Christian counselor or definitely it.
Jeremy Schumacher: Ping Pong. Came back to you a little bit with your expertise seeing these Christian counseling places that are advertising as abortion clinics or unwanted pregnancy. Help. And they're just fronts for some church or…
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: some mission group and I think some of these people are so such real religious elites that they really believe they're helping people.
Erica Smith: For sure.
Jeremy Schumacher: But it's so gross to see how non-consensual and…
Erica Smith: Absolutely, and…
Jeremy Schumacher: how deceptive there being
Erica Smith: this is really relevant because just last week or the week before, Pennsylvania stopped giving a state funding to crisis, pregnancy centers, and that was a massive move because before that Pennsylvania had been giving millions of dollars that were meant for poor women and children to religious based anti-abortion pregnancy centers, and it was a huge victory for reproductive health, advocates, and child welfare, advocates, that practice is going to be stopped now. But there are plenty of people that were like, this is so sad. Those centers give out diapers and…
Jeremy Schumacher: mm-hmm
Erica Smith: I'm like, It's not what they're there for though.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and one of the big things that I still see because religious people will contact me and it's like church does good. They'll share their experience…
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: where church has been helpful and am I kind of response that is everything that church helps with could be done elsewhere like it.
Erica Smith:
00:40:00
Jeremy Schumacher: None of it is required to come from church. so if your example is these places? Give out diapers? hey, there's a lots of ways where we can support that without it needing to be attached to our spiritual message.
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yes, s Let's give people health care. Let's give them baby food and…
Erica Smith: Mm- No and…
Jeremy Schumacher: all this other stuff. that doesn't need to come from a church.
Erica Smith: it shouldn't require that you modify your own behavior in order to get those things. that you adhere to their beliefs in order to access this stuff that's just you…
Jeremy Schumacher: Right.
Erica Smith: necessary to be alive.
Jeremy Schumacher: And so then it just becomes a predatory tactic of these are vulnerable people and…
Erica Smith: Yes, absolutely.
Jeremy Schumacher: that's who churches are trying to recruit.
Jeremy Schumacher: Look, we solved it.
Erica Smith:
Jeremy Schumacher: It's ongoing work, it's an interesting time societally to be doing work like this and working with religious trauma, or purity culture, or those types of things. Because so many people are leaving the church. And so, I think what will be Is starting,…
Erica Smith: He?
Jeremy Schumacher: but we'll continue to be like this large. Swell of people who are coming out of purity culture or a questioning, some of these unhelpful unhealthy beliefs and…
Erica Smith: I imagine that you see the same thing I do,…
Jeremy Schumacher: needing support in it.
Erica Smith: which there's a wave of people who began to deconstruct with the rise of trump and how evangelicals propped him up. And then there's another wave of people who began to deconstruct during the pandemic when they got the physical separation from their churches and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm
Jeremy Schumacher: Right.
Erica Smith: that gave them some mental space. So, I hear that all the time is,…
Jeremy Schumacher:
Erica Smith: it started for me in 2016 or then the pandemic really drove at home. So, Absolutely.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think the Internet, too. I go back all the way. It's like the rise of the Internet that took away, a lot of the power of those group dynamics that the church really thrived on. Because now if you're a teenager, who's closeted and you're not comfortable with your identity, let's say you go to a religious school or whatever so you can't come out but you can go find community online now,…
Erica Smith: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jeremy Schumacher: whereas, in the past that wasn't available and so that in group dynamic is not so rigid anymore.
Erica Smith: That is an excellent point.
Jeremy Schumacher: but yeah I see yes both trump and the pandemic in my line of work around mental health has been like And it's just so bad for everyone.
Erica Smith: Right.
Jeremy Schumacher: I was to shift a little bit to later topics before we wrap up. what are some things that you do for your own mental How do you balance? being active online and dealing with trolls and getting some of that negativity and then doing some of this hard work where you're maybe hearing about trauma, or you're hearing about these things, like, How do you kind of decompress?
Erica Smith: Yeah, this is one of my favorite things to talk about…
Jeremy Schumacher: What do you do to take care of yourself?
Erica Smith: because I think it's so important for those of us who could experience, vicarious, trauma or who are in the helping professions, I am lucky that. I think I got very good at that early in my career when I was working with youth in detention you don't go into a juvenile detention center, that is a traumatic space. you're witnessing children in jail. So I got very good at not taking that stuff home with me.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: And for me, that means that after work hours, I don't engage with the topics that are my work.
Erica Smith: So example, you…
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Erica Smith: folks will ask me all the time. Did you watch that show sex education? It's so good and I'm like No I didn't because I don't want to think about sex education in my off time. I'm gonna watch shows enough nothing to do with the things I think about for my work.
Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.
Erica Smith: I'm Very good at keeping those things separate. So when I'm on vacation or when I'm not at work or on the clock, I'm not going to read books about religious trauma and sex, Ed. I'm not gonna watch stuff about that. Another thing that is always been a big part of my self-care is, I have a lot of pets. I love animals. I love to caretak animals in this room right now with me are two dogs and at least one cat. I have two dogs and four cats and a foster cat that lives in the bathroom right now.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: My husband is a social worker so We both, do deeply difficult work, sometimes and our pets are like our happiness. I think there's, nothing that's more regulating to my nervous system when I can just spoon with my dog and…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: I'm like, and I have a therapist.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
00:45:00
Erica Smith: Yeah, so those are some of my,…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: my big ones.
Jeremy Schumacher: And a big shout out to rescue animals because I believe I saw online that all of yours are rescues.
Erica Smith: my dogs are both pit mixes which in Philadelphia. There's so many stray. Pit mixes and all my cats, definitely also came from the streets.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, we have three, we have two dogs, but we've had three rescues over the years,…
Erica Smith: yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: all from Florida, we work with a rescue here that goes down south and brings animals that were to kill shelter and brings him back up here so they can get adopted. So yeah,…
Erica Smith: That is amazing.
Jeremy Schumacher: we had two Great Dane mixes and…
Erica Smith: I love big dogs like I'm a big dog person…
Jeremy Schumacher: we have a true
Erica Smith: but the visual of a Great Dane.
Jeremy Schumacher: Mm-hmm
Erica Smith: Mix in a Chihuahuas very cute.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, we had the two 120 and 100 pounds male and a female. And then he's a big Chihuahua,…
Erica Smith: That's so cool.
Jeremy Schumacher: so he thinks he's a big dog, but yeah, then he's with the big great Dane. So,
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think I love obviously my therapist needs therapy therapist…
Erica Smith: that's cool.
Erica Smith: Yeah.
Jeremy Schumacher: but walking and being in nature is so good for processing and animals, too. there's all this research, we think in terms again, of big tea, PTSD type things for combat veterans or people who are getting emotional, support animals, but animals support,…
Erica Smith: Yes. I mean As I talk to you,…
Jeremy Schumacher: all of us there are two into our emotions
Erica Smith: my foot is touching a dog in my arm is touching a cat. I feel like often there's at least one animal that I'm in physical contact with it most times, even when I'm seeing my clients, when I do my own therapy, I sit in the same place and my therapist.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I taught through that pandemic and so one of the rules and in my classroom, because we're doing virtual stuff was like, if you have it a pet and it comes on screen and…
Erica Smith: sweetie.
Jeremy Schumacher: does a trick, you get extra credit. So all my students had easy extra credit opportunities, if they had pets Erica This has been awesome. I'm a huge fan of your work. want to work with, you wanna find more about your work …
Erica Smith: Thank…
Jeremy Schumacher: Where do they go?
Erica Smith: I am easy to find online purity culture.
Jeremy Schumacher: Where can they find your stuff?
Erica Smith: Dropout.com is my website and I'm on Instagram, which is where I do the most like interacting with people. That's definitely my online hub. So my Instagram account is Erica Smith, Dot Sex Dot ed. And, you mentioned something about How do you manage with Internet trolls? My account. Blessedly has been pretty chill for that and I restrict commenting to only people that follow me which I think helps. So, Yes, but I'm happy to you…
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. It's
Erica Smith: anyone who wants to work with me, There's such a variety of ways to do it, a variety of things that people can afford, whether it's one-on-one work or just purchasing a class to watch or a workbook. So yeah, all kinds of different ways to benefit.
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and A lot of my people who are listening to the podcasts are also professionals or therapist.
Erica Smith: Yes.
Erica Smith: Absolutely. I don't think you and I are going to run out of clients anytime soon, which might be good for our wallets, but I think is not great for the world in general,
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, it's so bizarre. I Spent a long time as a marriage therapist.
Erica Smith:
Erica Smith: No, no.
Jeremy Schumacher: Do you want a card? I'm not.
Erica Smith: Totally …
Jeremy Schumacher: This is a weird social interaction.
Erica Smith: in the same vein,…
Jeremy Schumacher: I'm not sure how to respond.
Erica Smith: when people ask me what I do, I think long and hard before I tell them that I'm a sex, educator, I have to get, a sense of, what's this person gonna.
Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.
Erica Smith: What's their response gonna be? Are they gonna start telling me their problems or They gonna judge what I do or they gonna like? So it is definitely, something that I'm like, Should I lie or just, sometimes I'll just be like, I work with young people because I still do have some of my work with young people. I just don't always say that I'm the sex educator because you don't know…
00:50:00
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.
Erica Smith: what that's gonna trigger in someone
Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, for Yeah, being in a helping profession is weird. So I've started the podcast, what let other people know that …
Erica Smith: Yes.
Jeremy Schumacher: Hey we have to focus on our mental health too.
Erica Smith: And I'm so glad.
Jeremy Schumacher: So this has been awesome. I'm glad that this worked out and we could schedule a time to record and being super generous with your time. I appreciate that. Love your work. We'll have all those links and different places that people can find your information in the show notes and as always on my stuff is over at wellness with jared.com just where people can find all my stuff.
Erica Smith: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Jeremy Schumacher: So Erica thanks so much for coming on.
Jeremy Schumacher: And to all the listeners out there, thanks for tuning in. Once again, we will have another new episode next week. Take care. Everyone.