The Truth About "Rapture Practice": Paula Yost on Why You’re Still Stuck in Survival Mode

**Is Your Nervous System Stuck in Survival Mode? | The Trauma of "Rapture Practice" & Purity Culture**

Did you grow up "practicing" for the Rapture? Do you still feel a spike of panic when you can’t find your parents, or feel a deep-seated shame about your body that you just can't shake? 

In this powerful episode of the **Un Holier Podcast**, we sit down with mental health professional Paula Yost to deconstruct the hidden scars left by evangelical and charismatic Christian environments. We’re diving deep into the science of **Religious Trauma Syndrome** and why your "anxiety" might actually be a physiological response to years of fear-based teaching.

### **In This Episode, We Discuss:**

* **The "Rapture Practice" Phenomenon:** How being told you could be "left behind" at any moment floods a child's brain with cortisol, rewiring the nervous system for chronic anxiety.
* **The Dark Side of Purity Culture:** Why tying a person's worth to sexual "purity" destroys autonomy, ruins consent, and creates long-term sexual dysfunction.
* **The Cortisol Connection:** Paula breaks down the clinical impact of fear-based theology on the developing brain—leading to lifelong struggles with rumination and depression.
* **Church Hypocrisy & Power Abuse:** Identifying the patterns of boundary violations and the systemic harm done to the LGBTQ+ community, including the devastating reality of conversion therapy.
* **The Road to Deconstruction:** How to reclaim your identity, set healthy boundaries, and find authentic support after leaving a high-control religious environment.

**If you found this video helpful, please Like, Subscribe, and share your story in the comments. You are not alone, and healing is possible.**

#religioustrauma  #deconstruction  #purityculture  #rapture  #mentalhealthmatters  #nervoussystemhealing  #UnHolierPodcast #churchtrauma   #Exvangelical

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome back to the Unholier Podcast. Today's guest is Paula Yost, a mental health professional who grew up in an evangelical Christian school. When you grow up in certain environments, things that are actually harmful get normalized. Things like practicing the rapture, for instance, being prayed over in school like something is wrong with you, being taught that your worth is tied to your purity, or watching authority figures cross lines that should never be crossed, and then being told to stay quiet about it. The confusing part, not everything was bad. There were moments of community, structure, and even comfort, which makes it a lot harder to entangle what helped you and what actually hurt you. Today we're talking about the psychological impact of growing up in these environments, how it shapes your identity, your relationships, and your nervous system, and what it actually looks like to heal from it. So let's get started. Paula, for people who don't grow up in this world, what does rapture practice even mean? And what did it feel like as a child?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Yeah. So the first time I remember seeing rapture practice, I must have been somewhere between the ninth grade. I think I was around 14. And the reason that I know that is because it was also right around the time that Kurt Cobain completed suicide. And I was a huge Kurt Cobain fan as a teenage girl growing up in the 90s and still am. Yeah, I say. So I remember going to church. For me, it wasn't church, actually. It was high school or middle school chapel, which I was forced to do once a week by my Christian school. And our youth pastor would yell, Rapture practice. And he would run into the room with like all this energy from like offstage, like running and grab the microphone. And all the other kids would like jump up into the sky like they were being swooped up in the rapture. And what I thought the entire situation was completely ridiculous. Yeah. I thought it was, first of all, even 14-year-old me did not believe in the concept of a rapture because the rapture is theology that didn't exist prior to the 1800s in the United States. Like there was no such thing as rapture theology in Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism or in any part of things that, like from the Church of England, early Protestantism, the only people that are into rapture now are American evangelicals. And that is theology that was nowhere in the early church prior to the 1800s. So it's not even good theology. But I thought it was ridiculous when I was 14. And I also think it's ridiculous now.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned that it wasn't even a part of theology, so to speak, until the 1800s. I think most people don't even realize that the word rapture isn't even in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

That's correct. It's nowhere in the Bible. And it's just something that someone made up. But I also think that the experience that I had with rapture practice also highlights what I think is wrong with a lot of American religious experiences now, is that this is not about character development or helping other people or really exploring personal faith. It's about entertainment. And it's also about a pastor who apparently feels the need to entertain by running into the room and yelling about rapture practice at the top of his lungs so that children can jump up into the sky. Again, I thought it was bad then. I think it's equally bad now.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah. I mean, growing up, I grew up in the independent fundamental Baptist Church. So similarly to how you grew up with the evangelical church, but the rapture was the cause of the majority of my religious trauma. I have often spoken on this podcast about the rapture being like I was more scared of the rapture than I was of even going to hell because I was afraid of being left behind, right? Like a tribulation. Yeah, you're left behind, you're in the tribulation. It seemed worse than hell because there was like monsters and people getting their heads chopped off and all of these things. And none of that is theological. You guys ever have to watch the not the newer ones, not the newer like left behind series, but the old from the 60s and 70s, like Distant Thunder and Thief in the Night, and I forget the, I think the last one was called Mark of the Beast. And it was this trilogy made by whatever Christian film company. And it was terrifying. And so every year for New Year's Eve, my dad, who was the pastor of the my church, we would have this what they would call watch night service. And instead of having a normal fun New Year's Eve, it was always like very traumatic because they would just play these movies for us and remind us that, you know, if you're not saved, they almost made it feel like at the strike of midnight, the rapture could happen and you could just be sitting here left behind in this church building. Like you're new.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

I think my experience is different from a lot of people's because this is gonna sound so strange, but my parents are not practicing Christians at all. Oh, okay. Which is odd. My father is actually an agnostic, and he probably hasn't stepped foot in a church in 50 years, unless it's for a funeral or a wedding or something he feels forced to attend. My parents just wanted me to get a really good academic foundation. And they felt like the local public school was not going to do that. I'm just academically gifted. I would have done well no matter where I went to school. So I had experiences with friends watching that kind of stuff, but I really wasn't in church all weekend with some of the similar types of traumas that you had being a preacher's child. Thank God. Um I've always looked at this stuff from a much more like analytical academic focus in into like why it was crazy.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah. And that's interesting that your parents didn't attend a church, but then put you in a Christian school just for the academic reasons. But did they, were they aware of the stuff that they were teaching, like as far as the quote unquote theological stuff that they were teaching to you?

SPEAKER_02 7:09

I don't think so. And I don't think I did a very good job of communicating that to my parents. I think if my father had known a little bit more, I would have been more likely to wind up in public school. When you're a kid, you just you don't always think, you don't always disclose everything that happened during your day when you're a 14-year-old girl to mom and dad.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So curious, since you went to this Christian school, but then you didn't go to a church anywhere, at what age did you start saying like this isn't normal? Or did you ever at that age?

SPEAKER_02 7:40

I think that I always knew that what I was experiencing in that environment was not normal. I think I always knew that. Like deep down I took issue, which also, for the record, made me a very unpopular child at times with several of my other teachers, which is something we'll talk about in a second. But I it's not like I'm the type of person who's never stepped foot in a church again or who wouldn't ever step foot in a church again. Um, I attended a Lutheran church with my grandparents for many, many years, mostly because it was important to my grandmother, but also because the Lutheran church focused on things like character and the true teachings of Jesus. And it wasn't like someone was a rock band with pyrotechnics and any of that. Like I don't want to have anything to do with any of that. Um, so it's not so much a matter of like I wouldn't describe myself as a complete unbeliever or a complete deconstructor at this time, but I definitely do think that the things that were done to you as a child and the things that I observed as a child were harmful. And I think they are particularly harmful to young women, more so than they are to young men.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah, I would agree with that. So I'm curious, just as with your background in the mental health space, like what does repeated exposure to this kind of religious trauma and fear put on a child's nervous system long term?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Basically, when children are exposed to things that scare them, being told you're gonna go to hell all the time, or being told about the rapture and being afraid they're gonna get left somewhere. Their brains are not emotionally mature enough to think through that or to process that. And so then when they're given that exposure, it dumps cortisol into a brain that's not fully developed yet. So it can lead to a lot of long-term problems with anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, ruminating thoughts that won't stop. And unfortunately, depression and anxiety are kind of one another's twisted siblings. So if you've got enough anxiety, what happens with people that have a lot of anxiety when they can't ever rest their mind, then that leads to a lot of depression because they're just always so anxious and like hyped up about stuff that they can't decompress down. And that makes your brain tired. I mean, it really does lead to long-term brain damage.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah. And that's so sad. I wish more people realized that. Do you see similarities between the anxiety that people experience from like church trauma and then clinical anxiety disorder?

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah. I figured some of the most miserable people, I think, are church people. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes you see them on a Sunday morning, you know, raising their hands, closing their eyes, like acting like they're whatever, but all through the week, they're depressed, they're the biggest complainers, they're the biggest gossipers. They're it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

That stuff's hard to watch.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

It is hard to watch. And I couldn't, that was one of the reasons why I finally just left church altogether because I gave it another go-around later on in life after I left OG church that I was in and divorced and all of that. So it was just going day in and day out to these church activities and seeing these people in their daily lives, like not living out what they were acting out on Sunday mornings. And it's like, I can't be around the hypocrisy and the fakeness. It's like either you hate your life or you don't, but don't do the in-between and act like you have it all together on a Sunday morning. Right. What would you say to parents who think that it's just like harmless spiritual teaching, or we just feel like we have to have our kid in church because of the way that they were raised and then their family was raised. And it's like a generational thing, like this obligation of just checking that off and but they're not maybe realizing what their children are being put through mentally.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

I think that comes down to a lot of education by mom and dad on what is actually going on in your child's um Sunday school class. What are they being told in youth ministry? What are they being told when you are not there? Um, one of the bad things is a lot of these parents subscribe to these beliefs. And so they don't care. They feel like this is what their children need to be taught. I will also tell you, kind of even in a different capacity, I think that children are very harmed by assuring them that when you die, you go to heaven. I once remember babysitting a little girl who was kind of like a young version of me. She was a very academically gifted little girl. And her great-grandmother had just died. And she was very disturbed by this. It was probably this little girl's first exposure to death. And she was about nine and she was in a full existential crisis. And she was like, How do you get to heaven? So, like, when you die, Jesus comes into your heart if you're saved during when you're alive, but then when you're dead and we bury your body in the ground or we cremate you, then how do you get to heaven? And the answer of like, well, sweetheart, no one knows that. No one knows the answers to those questions. That was deeply disturbing to her. And so I think that we have a real problem with telling children things like, well, we know for sure what happens when you die. I mean, I think the reality is that none of us know for sure what happens when we die. None of us can know that. That's impossible, scientifically impossible. People have been trying to figure that out since the dawn of time. There's no way to truly know what the answer to that is. And so when we tell children like it's a fact, like, well, you're just gonna go to heaven when you die. Many children are very disturbed by that. I remember being very disturbed by that. I think I was actually more upset by being told that like you just go to heaven, but not having anyone be able to explain any more than that. So I've made it a point with my children when my children say, Mom, what happens when somebody dies? I say, I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Let's talk about what different religions believe. Christians believe this, Buddhists believe this. I've just tried to provide my children with as much education as possible on what the potential options are because no one knows. And I think if you don't know the answer, just say, I don't know. But telling your kids what you think is gonna happen or just repeating some sort of theology that you can't prove is very upsetting to certain children. Now, I'm not saying there aren't some kids that are like, okay, I'm just gonna go to heaven, la di da-da-da, and they don't think about that any deeper. But for children who think about that very deeply, I think that's very disruptive.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah, for sure. And the psychology behind that, as a child, feeling that devastation, right? Or feeling that unknown, or they need an answer, how does that show up into adulthood? Does that like psychologically, what does that look like for an adult who goes through these existential crises and they're just not sure?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

I honestly think it creates an existential crisis that just won't stop. I mean, I remember almost being like deeply emerged in existential, constant pondering in a non-peaceful way in my soul. Like I felt very unsettled until one day I was actually taking a psychopathology class in grad school. I was probably 28 or 29 at the time. And I kept asking questions about going back to what does happen when we die. And finally, my professor was like, no one dies. And I was like, that's the answer that settled me mostly. That was the answer that I found most settling, which is probably why I've told it to my children.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, it's actually kind of a little freeing. I was the same way. I still am the same way. I just always question everything. If something is this is truth, then you have to believe it, I'm going to question it no matter what. That's just my personality. And my whole life I had questions. There were things that weren't adding up to me that were taught. And I was labeled a rebellious child. Oh, she's trouble. Oh, she's a Jezebel because I was questioning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Because you think.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah. I was recently told that deconstruction is dangerous. It's like, well, how can it be dangerous? All it is is critical thinking. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

But that those environments do not like females who think. They don't like, they do not like females who think at all. Not at all. And I think that is in part because a female who thinks is a female who's going to have a problem with purity culture.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Oh, yes. I definitely want to get into this. Oh man. Okay. First of all, since we're on this subject now, from a mental health perspective, what is purity culture actually doing to young girls' brains?

SPEAKER_02 16:55

I think purity culture is robbing young girls' brains of autonomy. I absolutely believe it is robbing them and it is creating fear that does not need to be there. Um, my earliest introduction to purity culture was I was in fifth or sixth grade. And I actually really liked my teacher prior to this class. And I had a teacher who walked in the room chewing gum and took the gum out of his mouth. This was also a male teacher, not a female person. I know what you're gonna say. Stuck the gum to the wall and then pulled it off and was like, if you have sex before you get married, you're basically like this piece of gum that is stuck to the wall. You are a used piece of gum. And first of all, that is not true. Right. Second of all, we should never be telling anyone that they are trash or they are a used piece of gum. Next of all, many children, even children in church, are victims of child sexual abuse. So what are you now saying to a child who has had some piece of their purity taken from them without their consent? You're now telling them they're just a used piece of gum. Whether they had any control over it or not, that was not my experience, but I do know other young women who that was their experience. That makes the abuse 10 times more horrible to deal with. So it starts with that, but I also think it's very much a form of mind control and it's a form of guilt. And so I also just want to add, quite frankly, I regret a lot of the sex that I didn't have, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Okay, this is interesting. Okay, go ahead because I want to get into this.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

I left high school a good little virgin, and I also actually made it through college as a good little virgin, and I regret that. In retrospect, there were opportunities for me in high school and in college where I could have had sex, and I didn't because I didn't want to go to hell and or I didn't want my purity to be compromised or any of the stuff that they taught me. And what I really think it did was rob me of opportunities where I could have maybe something bad would have happened to me, but probably not. Like I actually think I was more harmed by not being able to just make a free choice on my own without religion in the background making me feel bad about everything. And I also see a lot of young women who come to see me for therapy who now they've had years and years and years of purity culture to the point where they cannot relax and enjoy expressing themselves sexually at all because they've had so many years of being told that they should not enjoy sex. Essentially, at the end of the day, sex is great. It is a beautiful, wonderful thing. I love having sex, to be perfectly honest about it. I like it. And I think that everyone needs to have the opportunity to consent and to have their body touched or to touch another body in a way that they will find consensual and enjoyable. And when you take that away from someone, you are damaging them. And that's what purity culture does. It takes away from your long-term ability to relax and enjoy something that is beautiful and can be very beautiful, and is one of honestly one of the most beautiful things you can do as a human.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Yeah, that's definitely something that I can relate to on many, many levels. I was a virgin at my wedding altar. Um, I was not attracted to the man that I was told was God's will for my life. And so my first experience with intercourse was not good at all. Yeah, because you don't want no, and to the point where my body was there, like I ended up having to go to the doctor and get surgery because my body was literally not allowing him to penetrate, and so I had to undergo a surgery in order to allow my muscles to relax. And it was a very traumatic experience. You know, you're taught your whole life sex is bad, and then you get married, and it's like, okay, now you're free to have sex. And it's like, I know I'm not the only one who has experienced a similar reaction to it, but I do think that purity culture has a lot to do with that because you are drilled into your brain that sex is bad only within marriage. That's the only time you can have sex is within marriage, and the marriage bed is undefiled. You know, of course, that's about Bible verse. And so they preach this over and over and over. And you then have this concept of sex that, like all of a sudden, your chastity belt comes off on the wedding night, and it's going to be this glorious experience. And I think many of us can attest that that is not not the case at all.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

That is not the case. And those are things that are so personal to an individual. And the other thing I'd like to add to we as young women, we do not need our fathers being in there to say, well, I think this man is God's will for your life. This is the man that I want you to choose. This is not our father's decision. This is our decision. And we do not need our fathers participating in. I mean, I don't think that helps any either with the situation of our marriage choices.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

But there's the culture though within Christianity that does teach that your father owns you. There are people who have, have you seen these purity ring ceremonies where I had a marriage?

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah, we had one of those at my high school. Yeah. And my dad wanted nothing to do with it, but my mom went and gave me one. And those things are very, very real where you know your daddy gives you the purity ring so that you'll protect your purity. And again, that cannot be that is dangerous. That's damaging. And I think that this has gotten better over time, but I definitely do think that the purity culture of the 90s was incredibly harmful.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah, absolutely. Did you ever read the I Kiss Dating Goodbye book? Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. And guys on a campaign now to like undo everything he did. Well, that's no damage is done.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

I mean, thanks for the intense damage that you caused many of us. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I think he's divorced now, too.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Probably.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Probably so. I can only imagine the multitude of reasons why.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

I don't know. Karma, maybe. Who knows? Anyways. Okay. I talked a little bit about my experience, but I want to know from like a clinical standpoint if you can speak to the aspect of how does it impact somebody's relationship with their body and sexuality long term when it comes to being raised in that purity culture mentality.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

I'm just going to say something that I hope does not offend your viewers, but it just is reality. Masturbation is a normal part of human development. And so much of purity culture also tells us that we cannot do any level of self-exploration whatsoever. However, it seems to punish girls for that more than boys. Boys kind of get a free pass to boys will be boys. So if boys are masturbating, kind of people look the other way and don't really pay it any attention. But girls get really discouraged from masturbation. So many women need to have that experience because you need to have a certain level of self-exploration to really kind of figure out what you do like and what you do enjoy. And you can't tell a partner how to touch you if you don't have any earthly idea what to do. And so some of that's very important. But I also think there again, if you're immersed in like, I this is only for my husband, you know, it's very difficult for your brain to switch from, okay, sex is bad to now sex is great. And I I'm thrilled for women that are able to do that. But for a lot of women, they have the experience that you had where like that just doesn't work for them. And so then from that point forward, they're having to go through painful surgeries. Honestly, it's very similar to it's different from sexual abuse, but is it really?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

I'm I when when I told my story to David for the first time, he was like, So would you consider that rape even though you guys were married? And I'm like, Yes, I would, because I I wasn't consenting to it and I was telling him to stop.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Yes. And if you're telling someone to stop because it hurts, because it's not comfortable, that is rape. Anything that doesn't involve consent is rape. But also we have to think about how you got there. You never consented to any of this. You were with one person who your dad said wasn't who he wanted for you, replaced him with someone else, and you just kind of went along with it because you were young and that was what you were supposed to do. That goes back to what I've been saying about that's mind manipulation, it's mental control. And they don't do that to males the way they do it to females.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Oh no, absolutely not. I think it's just terrible how females are treated within Christianity. We're told that we should just basically bow down to whatever the man wants. We have to be submissive. We don't get to have a say nine times out of ten. We have to feel shame and guilt for speaking out or being however we want. We feel unworthy. Many of us feel unworthy because that's what we were told, just like the used piece of bubblegum, right? It's you're unworthy, nobody's gonna want you, your damaged goods. But I didn't see the men and the boys getting those messages growing up. It was just the women and girls.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

That's because they didn't. And they would divide us up. The boys would go into one room and the girls would go into the other. I don't know what they told the boys, but I know they scared the heck out of us. The other thing I remember too, everyone was like, Well, we can't really talk to you about what I think this is one of the funniest things. So my 10th grade help them teacher was a total lesbian. And like was she like out though? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. But like I was 15 and I was like, She's totally a lesbian. And she got fired later that year for, in fact, being a lesbian. But before she came out and they realized she was a lesbian, she was trying to teach us about sex with men. And we were like, Well, you know, like what happens? And she was like, I don't know, because I've never had sex with a man. And I was like, Yeah, I bet you haven't. And honestly, I love her and like I like have a friendship with her. I like her very much as an adult, so I'm not, but that's just the ridiculousness of it all. Like we and they also the damage, like we talk about the damage they've done in purity culture. The damage that they've done to the LGBT community is also profound.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yes, for sure. And I think there's a lot of people who are closeted in churches, they feel like they can't be themselves, they have to just maintain, you know, this image that they're told. And I think it's really sad that you can't just be who you are.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Absolutely. You know, this is one of my favorite stories about my dad, too. So my dad is a farmer, and so my dad had a bunch of cows when I was, and my dad used to be super homophobic. Back in the 90s, my dad was real homophobic about everything. One day when I was in college, he called me and he was like, I'm wrong. I've been wrong about all of it. I was like, Daddy, what are you talking about? And he goes, My bull is gay. And I said, What? And by the way, the bull's name was Pickle. Fun fact. He was like, Pickle is a complete homosexual. I've tried to get him to mate with every single heifer in the yard, and he won't do it. Can't get any calves. And I walked outside a little bit ago, and he was humping one of my steers. He is gay. I did not make him gay. They're born like that. And I was like, Yeah, dad, they're absolutely born like that. And he, and so it was like a total 180 for my dad. Like he at that point on, he was like, whatever. He was like, I don't want to hear the details of it or anything, but I accept that it occurs in nature. Yeah. And I think that's really important. Like for young women who are lesbians who are being forced to marry men by their family or by their religion and having to fake and act like they like it, that's healthy. And why would you want to, as a man, why would you want to sleep with a woman who doesn't like men? And as a female, I don't want to get into a sexual relationship with a man who does not like women. Why would you want to do that? How does that help anyone or anything?

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Do you think that there's a link between people staying in those unhealthy relationships in purity culture just because they feel like um they have this ideology from purity color, okay, that they have to just stay, you know, no matter what, and be miserable.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Yes, I absolutely think that they do. And I also would like to add, too, that lying is also a sin. Yeah. It's a 10 commandment. Homosexuality is not a commandment. Thou shalt not lie is a commandment. So if you're having to fa being a completely different sexual orientation, I also joke with my friends a lot that the number one way that I know homosexuality is not a choice is because it's one I would make. If I could make myself be attracted to other women, I probably would have done it because I think that I would be much happier with a wife. And I would be so much more successful if I had a wife. But like, I can't bring myself to do it. I'm looking at you right now on the screen. I'm like, you're a beautiful woman, but unfortunately, I like doing a whole lot. Like it is what it's what it is, right? But I'm like, but that's also me living my truth. And we should all be able to live our truths no matter what it is.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah. I think it's so sad when I hear about these like conversion therapies that people are sent to these places where they have to basically be almost reprogrammed. Yeah, pray the gay away can't.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

That's going to work. Yes, it might work for a couple years, but it's not gonna work in the long haul.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

It's just not, it's really I feel like the long-term effects of something like that are just so detrimental to a person's psyche. I mean, that's gotta cause a lot of anxiety and depression later on in life. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Because it's the same thing. You're being told you can't be who you are.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

So how are you going to live authentically? And again, sex is great for people who enjoy sex. I mean, I'm not saying we don't have asexual humans who just don't enjoy it, but the average healthy adult human likes having sex. Well, if you're telling someone you can't have sex with the person that you are attracted to, then it's not going to be that much fun.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah, that's so true. Because I mean, I went through that and it was definitely not fun at all.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

No.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

So there was one point where I was talking to a friend of mine who actually grew up in the church with me, and she was married, and she was enjoying her sexuality with her husband at the time. And I was telling her about my experiences, and I was like, I hate sex, like I hate it. And she's like, What? How could you hate sex? And I'm like, you know, it just it's it's uncomfortable. I don't think he knows what he's doing. Like, there's all these different factors, plus, I'm not attracted to them. And she's like, that is a huge one, yeah. Minor detail missing there, but she basically told me she's like, okay, after work, we're going somewhere. I'm like, okay, where are we going? So after work, we went to a sex shop. And I'd never been in one before. I felt like I was stepping into Satan's lair or something, you know. That that sounds appropriate. That's what they teach. As one does. But basically, she was like, You're gonna buy a vibrator, you're gonna take it home, you're gonna use it, and then you're gonna report back to me.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

And it took a few days to get up the nerve to do it, plus I had to wait till he was not around. And I went ahead and used it. And as I've described it before, it was like angels were flying around my head. It was like fireworks were going off. I was like, okay, now I know I'm not the issue. Like, I know now I can experience pleasure, but I ain't getting it from him. You know? That's right. But he was not for you. He was not for me, but later on he found that vibrator underneath one of the sinks in the bathroom and then turned around and accused me of cheating on him.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

There again, that's the type of privilege that the boys are then taught. They are also very uneducated about our bodies and what it does and all of it. And that's just a problem. You know, one of the stories I also want to tell you about, and I haven't I haven't ever really publicly talked about this, but so my junior and senior year of high school, we had a youth pastor, and he was dating his way through my high school. Like Okay, how old was he? He was, I believe, 23. Okay. So I was 17. I did not date him. My non-religious father would have shot someone who was over if your age started with a two and you were showing up at Eddy O's farm to date 17-year-old me, you were not going to survive that.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

Like I would have never even tried that with my father because that would not have happened. So, in any event, my dad's not a Christian, but he has a good old country redneck, and that's an important thing to highlight.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

This pastor dated, to my knowledge, a 15-year-old, at least one other 17-year-old, a 16-year-old. And every single one of their parents were like, Isn't it wonderful? She's dating the pastor. He's gonna protect her purity. One of those girls, they broke up. I don't know why they broke up. I don't care why they broke up, but she had to be hospitalized after. And like, he ultimately wound up marrying a girl that I went to high school with, but she was over 18 when they got married. And I I will say they've been married for a very long time. I am not aware of him actually having sex with any of those girls. I can't speak to that. I wasn't involved. I've not even heard rumors about any of that. But what I can say is whether he was sleeping with them or not, that is an abuse of power. You are the youth pastor, and you are your age starts with a two, and you are supposed to be responsible for guiding the spiritual development of a high school, and you are dating students at school, that is a problem. And no one addressed that. And I think that at the time, I think I'm one of the only people who was like, that's kind of illegal, right? There's I thought it was weird and gross then. I think it's worse now. Looking back on that in 2026, that did not age well, sir. No, it did not age well at all.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

So the pastor or the principal never approached the subject with him, like, or was it not like widely known that was going on? Oh, the whole school knew he was dating the girls.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

I mean, this was a small school. Like my senior class had 40 people in it. Like, we all knew. Now, whether the principal said something to him, I don't know. I have no idea what may have happened between adults. My hunch has always been that because the parents weren't mad, the principal wasn't mad. Like, if you're gonna let your daughter date the 23-year-old youth pastor, why is that the principal's business if you don't care? You know, as as long as they're dating off campus, then why is it the school's problem? That's what I always assumed happened was they just figured, like, we don't have mad parents. So I think that everybody was quote unquote consenting to it, except for arguably the 15-year-old girl who probably was being told, Oh, yay, you have the chance to become a pastor's wife. That was another thing that my school was very obsessed with was like, you're gonna become wives and mothers. I remember there was a girl who was older than me. This girl was so smart, she was really, really brilliant. And I remember one day one of our female teachers prophesied over her. Yeah, like prophesied like I can tell the future, prophesied over her that she was going to be a preacher's wife someday. And like that was the most wonderful thing in the world. And I was like, I mean, that is wonderful if that's what she wants to do and if that's the path for her. But why are you trying to tell someone who is in high school that their ultimate destiny is to be a pastor's wife? You don't know that. You don't know, like, you have no idea who she's going to meet or where life is going to take her. But I do know that putting her in that box and making her think that box is her destiny probably robbed her of a lot of opportunities that she otherwise would have had. I also saw girls in my class who I thought were very smart. Like a really good friend of mine got over a$1,200 on her SAT. And she had perfect grade. She probably could have gone to any college you want to name. I mean, she might not have gone to Harvard, but she could have gone in the 90s. She could have solidly gotten into UNC Chapel Hill or Clemson or something like that. But her dad didn't want to pay for it because she was just going to be a wife and a mother anyway. So, what was the point in educating my girl? I, on the other hand, was a little Miss Super Nerd. And so I was not real popular because there was no way I was going that path. Like I was going to the best out-of-state college that my happy little bud could get myself admitted to. And I was away from all these people. And the church that you grew up in, was there a lot of speaking in tongues? Did you guys do all that?

SPEAKER_01 40:32

No, no, we didn't speak. There was no speaking in tongues, no healing, nothing like that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

So my high school was run by the assemblies of God. And there was a lot of speaking in tongues.

unknown 40:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

I gathered that. When you said that this girl was prophesied over, I was like, oh, that's Pentecostal. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

We had a lot of Pentecostal happening in there. Now there were there was no dancing with snakes. I do want to make that clear because people always ask me that. It was not a snake church. And for that I am very thankful. But there was a lot of like laying hands on, prophesying, being slain in the spirit where somebody just like falls over in the middle of church and everybody stands around and sings until they decide to get up. And there was a lot, and I say that because I don't for one moment believe that God makes you fall over like that. I think you do that because it's performative. I would 100% think and I also think speaking in tongues is 100% performative. I don't think that any of these people really speak in tongues. I think this is performance behavior. And so, in any event, once I was a senior in high school and I was really struggling with calculus. Like in retrospect, I was always really good at like pretty much anything academic someone gives me to do, I was good at it. Like I won the awards for algebra one, algebra two. Well, my calculus teacher taught on one of those really old school, like you had to crank the laminate paper so it would go up on the screen. And you would write with these markers that would smear. And I could not learn that way. If you'd put everything on a chalkboard and I can follow it from the chalkboard, I'm good. But the second you start putting it on that laminate paper, I don't know what's going on because I can't see it all. Like I can't see it from the bottom to the top.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

See, I used to love when they had those because they'd turn all the lights off and then they would have the projector on, and I would just be like, cool, nap time. Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

I was the nerd that was trying to figure it out. And I was like, no one can learn off this. So anyway, I was very frustrated. And I was expressing my frustration to my calculus teacher. Like, I remember yelling something to the effect of, I do not understand what FFX means. I don't know what it means. Like, just explain it to me. And she put her hands on my shoulders and began to pray that the Holy Spirit would help me and spoke in tongues. And I was just like, I don't need to be prayed over, ma'am. I need you to teach me what F of X is. After that, to be honest with you, I just quit. Calculus was the worst grade I made the entire time I was in high school because I quit. I just stopped trying. And then when I went to Virginia Tech, I had to take calculus again. But I had a teacher there and I learned exactly what I needed to do and I had no problem. It was that environment. And that's, you know, and again, that's the kind of thing that makes kids quit. Oh, also, fun fact about that teacher, she also taught me what oral sex was. What? Wait. Yeah, let me explain that one. So I was in the I was in the ninth grade, and I don't remember why I was in her room. I think I was taking geometry with her or something. Anyway, as I always was when I was in her class, I was frustrated because she was teaching on this overhead projector that I didn't, I couldn't follow anything from. And so I remember saying this. And she was like, Polyghost, go into the hallway. And I was like, What did I do? So I walk out in the hallway and I am so embarrassed. Like, I have no idea why I'm in the hallway. And she comes out there and she goes, young, do not use language like that in my room. And I was like, What? I just said sucks. She said, Don't say that again. I was like, why? I'm talking about it like suck an egg. Like I heard it on The Simpsons. Like, I don't understand. She goes, Paula, that is a term for a homosexual act. And I said, What? So she said, Go back in class and don't ever say that again. So I go back in class and I'm like, what is she talking about? Like I have, I am clueless. I have no idea. And I'm 14, right? So my friends are oh, what did she say? So we get into the cafeteria and I tell all my friends, and none of them knew what she was saying either. Like none of us knew. We were all a bunch of 14-year-old girls who had never heard of a blowjob before. And we had no idea. So one of the girls went and got an older brother. And she was like, hey, I want to talk to you about what what happened to Paula today. And so he came over and told us what she was saying. And it took me a really long, like it took me a couple years, like it took me until I got into college. And I was like, oh my gosh. She thinks that oral sex is just something that gay people did. Her poor husband.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

Yeah. I mean, and we also if she thinks that's true, then he's also not giving it to her, so poor her too. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

And that is how I learned what oral sex was. Wow. That is not how that is supposed to occur.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Yeah, that is crazy. It's kind of hard to explain to people who did not grow up in that kind of environment. Like people that went to public school or people that didn't grow up in church, they just they know just normal life stuff. And then you get somebody like me and my husband, he always says, like, you're like from another planet, because and really what he's saying is like you grew up in a cult because you have this totally different mindset growing up of what the world is like, what's normal, what isn't normal. And then you get out into the world and you're like a fish out of water almost, you know, you have no idea what things mean, what what life is really like outside of the church walls. And I'm gonna tell you, sometimes there's a rude awakening.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

And I think, and I say this a lot when I have young women who come to see me now as a therapist, who have been raised in homeschool and homeschool environments, and who have been told a lot about purity culture and now their marriage isn't working out. What I really want for all those people is to just be able to figure out who you are and what do you want. I'm not saying that religion is important to people. Like even Charles Darwin has, you know, if you read Charles Darwin's works when he was coming up with the theory of evolution, he even wrote in his books that religion is important to people. And I don't know that society would be served by completely taking all forms of religious faith away. In fact, I think it could actually be detrimental. Um the same professor who told me a long time ago, you know, no one knows what happens when you die. He also used to caution us against messing with religious magic. And by that he meant if you have a client who their faith is deeply important to them, do not mess with that. Let them have that. Some people truly do need that. And I'm not telling you you shouldn't be able to have a faith or have pieces of your character or things that are important to you be rooted in faith. What I'm telling you is that it needs to truly be what you believe and what is important to you. It should not be something that you are blindly following because a pastor or God, because most of the time when people have told me God said, it wasn't God saying anything. It was that person wanting to impose their will onto my life or onto a life of a friend of mine. And I think that the most important thing we can do is allow people like that to truly figure out who they are, experience who they are, and just leave them alone. As long as you're not hurting anybody. You know, I'm you shouldn't be having sex with a teenager when you're an adult. You know, you certainly shouldn't be touching children. But as long as what you're doing is consensual, then we need to leave people alone and let them figure out what they want to do with their own life. Because the truth of that is in you.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Yeah, I love that. And I think that when you said, as long as you're not hurting anyone, something came up into my head, and and it was like, I know people who refuse to leave the church and deconstruct and find what they truly believe. Their paradigms are being challenged currently. They have this internal struggle going on, but they're staying because they don't want to hurt mom or dad who are elderly now, or grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, whatever that have this generational line right into Christianity. And if they leave that, that would hurt the family. That would hurt so-and-so. And they have to essentially live a lie or live in an environment that they're not comfortable in because they want to keep everyone around them comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

And what I can say about that is I don't think anyone should live a lie. I don't either. I don't think anyone should live a lie. I there there's no one at this point in my life, there's no one in nothing that I'm going to live a lie for.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I agree. That's, and that is a tough thing to navigate because I know just from my own experience, once I left the church, I would occasionally have the older lady, if I'd end up at a funeral or a wedding, come up to me and be like, We miss you. You should come back, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, the only time you say that is when you see me at one of these occasions and you don't reach out otherwise. You don't care what my life is otherwise, unless you're getting on the phone to gossip to other church members about what you think is happening in my life. And so I got to a point where I was like, you know what? To heck with it. I can't be fake anymore. I cannot live in this hypocrisy anymore. And I have to step away from it. And if it means losing everything, like community, everything that I knew, my previous identity, because that's what happens. Like you, you lose who you were. I mean, you lose everything in order to find your true self. And that was something that I did. And it's not something that's easy. Like, you have to be a strong individual. Or at the time, I didn't feel like I was strong. I put myself into therapy. I was going through all this stuff at one time. And I was able to find a really amazing therapist that I was able to have these conversations with. And she was able to help me through that process. But man, it was tough. And when you lose community and everything that you've ever known, that can be almost a dangerous situation in and of itself. Because if you don't have those safety mechanisms in place, then that can become a very dark, lonely place, too. So, what would you recommend for somebody who's wanting to leave, who's wanting to deconstruct and separate themselves from that environment, that church or that cult environment that they're currently in and they feel like they're living a lie and they want to find themselves and get out of that? What would you recommend to them?

SPEAKER_02 52:16

First of all, I want to say that I'm really proud of you because it is hard to do that. And um it does take a certain amount of inner strength to be able to do it. But the other thing that I would tell anyone who's willing to do it is you're never going to be happier than you are when you're able to live who you are. And you need to be able to have the space to figure who that person is. You need to be able to experience that to figure out who you are and where you belong. And so there is always going to be support. It's just not the support that you're used to. Because you will be able to find someone, some new friend, some therapist, some new romantic partner. You will be able to find somebody who will become your support system. But you're never going to be able to find that if you stay where you are. Because all that's going to happen, like if you had stayed where you were, you probably never would have been able to get divorced. Or if you did somehow manage to convince your family to support you in getting divorced, your family would have put you in a second situation that would have been just as bad or maybe worse. And so you're never going to be able to live as your authentic self and figure out who you are and deconstruct yourself unless you leave. Unless you just get out. So instead of focusing on what's behind you, focus on what's in front of you because you're going to feel much happier when you're able to show up for yourself and show up for other friends and other partners the way you truly are. And there again, that doesn't necessarily mean you leave all religion behind. I'm also not saying that at all. You can rediscover religion the way that you think it needs to be expressed to you. You just heard me say, I totally don't believe in prophesying or speaking in tongues. I don't believe in that at all. But if I was going to go to church tonight, I'd probably go to a Lutheran or an Orthodox church.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Yeah. I have had to reconstruct after deconstruction. I've had to reconstruct my framework of basically what I felt God was, because the idea of God that was given to me is not something that I want to cling to. It was very fear-based control and not love, not mercy, not grace, all the things that Jesus emulates, but not the God of the Bible. And so it was very confusing for a very long time because they would always say, you know, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and Jesus is God. So therefore, if Jesus is God, then he must be the same guy that's in the Old Testament doing all these heinous things. And I'm like, I just can't make it make sense. And so for me, that was sort of like the crack in the foundation. And then from there, it just became I wasn't going to completely throw out the idea of God because I do feel like there is a higher power, a creator, a being out there that that loves and wants the best for all of us. And so that was what I have clung to, and I've just reframed it for myself. And I actually feel a lot freer and more peace and more like less anxiety and all of those things than I ever did within Christianity, like traditional Christianity, if that makes sense. It makes total sense.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

And I think that that is what happens to a lot of people who grow up in these much more fundamentalist, charismatic, assemblies type environments. I think there's a lot more deconstruction and then reconstruction than stuff in. But I'm really proud of you because you did work and you did the work when it was hard.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Thank you. I appreciate it. It was hard, but now I feel like I feel a responsibility to help people with this podcast to have these types of conversations so that people can see like there's more of us out there and we are becoming a community and we're able to help walk each other through these experiences and and help each other find the way, really. Absolutely. Do you have any closing statements or anything like that that you would like to share with the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 56:32

I mean, I just want to say how thankful I was to be here. And, you know, I have been on a lot of podcasts, but I've never really done one where I've talked about my religious experiences or personal religious past. And I also just want to say to all of my first assembly girls, and you know who you are, I told you guys I was gonna do this, and I did this partly for you. And so I also hope that getting that message about what really happened to us out is something that gives you guys hope and peace as well.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Oh, I love that. That's amazing. Thank you so much for being here today with me, Paula. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure to meet you too. Thank you. This conversation is not one of those that just ends when the episode ends. Because if you saw yourself in any part of this, the fear, the confusion, the pressure, the unlearning, just know there is nothing wrong with you for questioning it now. That's not rebellion. That's awareness. And healing doesn't mean you have to throw everything away, but it does mean you need to decide what you carry forward and what you don't. A huge thank you to Paula for not only bringing the clinical perspective, but the lived experience that made this conversation hit on a different level. If you like this episode, please share it with somebody who needs it. Because these are the conversations that help people feel less alone and start asking better questions. And if you've been quietly wrestling with any of this, you are not alone. Thank you for listening. Before we close out, I just want to share a quick reminder. The stories told on this podcast are personal experiences and perspectives. They're shared to create awareness and connection, not as medical, legal, or mental health advice. Some of the conversations here focus on abuse, trauma, and other heavy topics. So please take care of yourself while listening. It's always okay to pause, skip an episode, or step away if you need to. And if anything we talked about brings something up to you, we encourage you to reach out to a trusted professional or support resource. You don't have to carry any of this alone. Thank you for listening.