Speaker 1: Do you ever scroll through social media only to find
Speaker 1: yourself bombarded by bad news, hot takes, mommy bloggers, influencers
Speaker 1: and picture perfect families or professionals who are honored yet
Speaker 1: also humbled to share more great news about their career.
Speaker 1: It's hard to not get wrapped up in how everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing, But what about you? How are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to change? And what are
Speaker 1: you doing to change it? At Cerebral, we believe making
Speaker 1: time for your mental health is key to your overall
Speaker 1: well being. That's why we make it easier than ever
Speaker 1: to access therapy and doctor prescribed medication tailored to work
Speaker 1: for you. And the best part, Cerebral offers in network
Speaker 1: care so you can focus on feeling better without worrying
Speaker 1: about cost. Seventy two percent of people say they felt
Speaker 1: better in just twelve weeks, So take the first step today.
Speaker 1: Visit Cerebral dot com slash podcast to see how affordable
Speaker 1: and accessible mental health care can be with insurance. Cerebral
Speaker 1: make time for mind time.
Speaker 2: If you have your own story of being in a
Speaker 2: cult or a high control group.
Speaker 3: Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abuse of
Speaker 3: power that you'd like to share.
Speaker 2: Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
Speaker 2: four seven eight six trust.
Speaker 3: That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight.
Speaker 2: Or showed us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: Trust me, Trust me.
Speaker 5: I'm like a swat person. I've never lived.
Speaker 3: To you, I never If you think that one person
Speaker 3: has all the answers, don't.
Speaker 6: Welcome to trust me.
Speaker 3: The podcast about cult, extreme belief and manipulation from two
Speaker 3: obsessors have actually experienced it.
Speaker 6: I am low La Blanc.
Speaker 4: And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
Speaker 6: And obsessors, we actually are this time. This one's real. Today.
Speaker 3: Our guest is Maggie Rowe, former writer on Arrested Development
Speaker 3: and author of Sin Bravely, a book about her experiences
Speaker 3: with moral scrupulosity or sin focused OCD.
Speaker 6: So we do talk a lot about OCD on this show.
Speaker 3: And here's a guest who wrote an entire book about
Speaker 3: growing up with religious obsessions. She's going to tell us
Speaker 3: about her first obsessions about what was and was not sin,
Speaker 3: how she started to analyze the Bible with a critical
Speaker 3: mind to try to understand how to avoid hell, and
Speaker 3: how her parents tried to help but her church leaders
Speaker 3: didn't understand OCD and made it worse.
Speaker 4: It might not sound like it, but this book is
Speaker 4: extremely funny. It's very interview I we'll also talk about
Speaker 4: the compulsion she would engage in to make sure she
Speaker 4: was being the right amount of righteous, how she checked
Speaker 4: herself into a treatment facility for Christians, the incorrect diagnosis
Speaker 4: of bolimia she received, and how she finally got diagnosed
Speaker 4: with moral scrupulosity and began getting the treatment she actually needed.
Speaker 3: Hell, yeah, Maggie is so funny, and she was so
Speaker 3: funny when we weren't recording. If you guys had heard
Speaker 3: this story about her getting caught in her front gate
Speaker 3: as it was moving, it's.
Speaker 4: Like the reverse Bridesmaids, Like when in the beginning of
Speaker 4: Bridesmaids when she gets caught on top of the gate.
Speaker 4: Maggie got caught under under her gate trying to get
Speaker 4: on the podcast. So she like loves something outside and yeah,
Speaker 4: she's gold.
Speaker 2: So to have somebody who's written and worked and produced
Speaker 2: and arrested development one of my favorite shows ever. And
Speaker 2: then also had this thing like when she released the book,
Speaker 2: I remember reading it and being like, this is the
Speaker 2: closest I've ever related to somebody about obsessing about how
Speaker 2: and it's fucking funny.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, yeah, it is super funny before we get into it,
Speaker 3: and you can hear how funny it is.
Speaker 4: With your own two ears, or I.
Speaker 6: Mean, you know, don't set their expectations too high.
Speaker 3: You can hear what it is that we're talking about. Megan,
Speaker 3: what's your cultiest thing of the weekly?
Speaker 4: Okay, there's a big case in Australia. A girl just
Speaker 4: died because she's eight years old because this faith based
Speaker 4: mission was like, we're gonna pray her diabetes away, and
Speaker 4: they're all going to jail. It's getting like prosecuted right now.
Speaker 4: But I'm not going to choose that one. Okay, what
Speaker 4: I'm going to choose, that's just like I'm just letting
Speaker 4: you guys know that's happening. I'm going to choose this
Speaker 4: new exercise class that I joined. It's kind of ballet based, right,
Speaker 4: I've been doing it for a million years. I took
Speaker 4: a long break, I came back and I really love it.
Speaker 4: But I realized the other day how baked in unwritten
Speaker 4: rules are because there was a girl in the class
Speaker 4: who wasn't behaving like you're supposed to. For example, when
Speaker 4: we would do something really hard like auja, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: this suck.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 4: Just being loud and you're not supposed to make a
Speaker 4: peep in this class, And I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: that's so interesting, Like the slightest variation from expected behavior
Speaker 4: is so affronting, even in something as stupid as an
Speaker 4: exercise class. So, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It just reminded me that it's okay to make noises
Speaker 2: and classes that are hard. I don't need to I
Speaker 2: don't need to like subscribe so diligently to this unwritten rule.
Speaker 2: And maybe next time I'll be like, shit, this is hard,
Speaker 2: and you know, yeah, break the mold.
Speaker 6: Right the old megan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I will. So anyway, that's mine,
Speaker 4: what about you? What's yours?
Speaker 3: Well, before I say mine, I like the idea that
Speaker 3: it would be like, okay, so in this episode, since
Speaker 3: we're talking so much about OCD, I like the idea that,
Speaker 3: like we need to sort of build up our tolerance
Speaker 3: to defying group expectations. Yeah, and that seems like such
Speaker 3: a safe, nice way to like do a little exposure.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I like it.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, okay, So what do you think I should
Speaker 2: do just like crack a joke.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or just be like.
Speaker 2: Whoa, that was hard, but yeah, I want to do
Speaker 2: that so great, love it.
Speaker 4: I'll keep y'all updated.
Speaker 3: I think we should all look for ways and maybe
Speaker 3: this is a thing I don't know. I like it
Speaker 3: to ways, to find small little ways to defy the
Speaker 3: pressures that.
Speaker 6: We feel from a group to conform.
Speaker 3: I think that would be a really interesting exercise.
Speaker 4: Oh god, I'm like pre embarrassed for myself, but I'm
Speaker 4: gonna do it. Okay, what's yours, Lola? What's yours?
Speaker 2: Um?
Speaker 3: You know, it's always social media, if I like, when
Speaker 3: is it not social media? I mean, it's the country,
Speaker 3: it's the country, and it's social media.
Speaker 6: And this week I posted on.
Speaker 3: Social media about the country shocking, and I was actually
Speaker 3: talking about how indoctrinated groups will tell their followers that
Speaker 3: everybody else is indoctrinated, and it can become very confusing
Speaker 3: when you're trying to decilearn like who's really in the
Speaker 3: cult and who isn't, because everyone is telling their group
Speaker 3: that the other people are indoctrinated. Just because you are
Speaker 3: being told that another group is indoctrinated, doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: yours isn't right, right, So it can be it can
Speaker 3: be so confusing.
Speaker 6: And so what I what I focused on in the
Speaker 6: in the video.
Speaker 3: Was like you did a video, I did a video,
Speaker 3: And what I focused on in my video about that
Speaker 3: was the control of information and the silencing of critique
Speaker 3: and punishing journalists and that kind of thing. And those
Speaker 3: points are points that I definitely want to make. But
Speaker 3: what was interesting about it, which is like sort of
Speaker 3: a weird takeaway, but.
Speaker 6: Was that I talked really fast.
Speaker 3: In the beginning of the video to like I mean,
Speaker 3: I just was like feeling some kind of way, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just gonna talk fast in this
Speaker 3: one and see what happens. And I did so much
Speaker 3: better than all of my other normal, normal pace talking.
Speaker 6: And I and I just find that curious. I find
Speaker 6: that interesting.
Speaker 3: It's it's like everybody's arguing on this fucking video. I
Speaker 3: wonder if some of it is that when you talk
Speaker 3: fast and loud, you seem confident, and so people want
Speaker 3: to listen and like, not that I am trying to
Speaker 3: become like a cult leader of any kind.
Speaker 6: I am just trying not at all.
Speaker 3: Definitely, but like there, it is difficult to cut through
Speaker 3: on social media, so like you know, you look for
Speaker 3: like ways to do that. And it made me think
Speaker 3: about the other people who've blown up on social media
Speaker 3: and like the way that they're literally just just the
Speaker 3: their tone and the way that they're talking about what
Speaker 3: they're talking about. It seems like it can be almost
Speaker 3: more important than the content itself. So I just thought
Speaker 3: that was an interesting little window into like cutting through
Speaker 3: the noise online.
Speaker 7: It's so scary.
Speaker 6: It's so scary.
Speaker 3: Because also I don't want to talk that fast in
Speaker 3: order to make my points.
Speaker 6: I can't keep that up.
Speaker 3: Like I did, go to auctioneer school as a kid,
Speaker 3: like I did, I can do it, but I don't.
Speaker 4: Think can we bring your ventriloquism into the into the
Speaker 4: mix as well? We need your auctioneering you're during trilloquism,
Speaker 4: and then finally the arc will be complete.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, maybe that's the secret to my to
Speaker 6: go viral.
Speaker 4: I think it might be well, interesting points, interesting points.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to see how many more videos you do
Speaker 4: like this and if you become the auctioneer girl, hell.
Speaker 6: Ya go on?
Speaker 4: All right? Stoph we talk to Maggie.
Speaker 7: Let's do it.
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Speaker 1: Do you ever scroll through social media only to find
Speaker 1: yourself bombarded by bad news, hot takes, mommy bloggers, influencers
Speaker 1: and picture perfect families or professionals who are honored yet
Speaker 1: also humbled to share more great news about their career.
Speaker 1: It's hard to not get wrapped up in how everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing. But what about you? How are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to change and what are
Speaker 1: you doing to change it? At Cerebral, we believe making
Speaker 1: time for your mental health is key to your overall
Speaker 1: well being. That's why we make it easier than ever
Speaker 1: to access therapy and doctor prescribed medication. Taylored to work
Speaker 1: for you. You and the best part, Cerebral offers in
Speaker 1: network care so you can focus on feeling better without
Speaker 1: worrying about cost. Seventy two percent of people say they
Speaker 1: felt better in just twelve weeks. So take the first
Speaker 1: step today. Visit Cerebral dot com slash podcast to see
Speaker 1: how affordable and accessible mental health care can be with insurance.
Speaker 1: Cerebral make time for mine time.
Speaker 6: Welcome Maggie Rowe to trust me. Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 6: So happy to be here, so happy to have you.
Speaker 6: Megan is obsessed.
Speaker 7: With you completely.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: This book is one of my favorites. It really helped
Speaker 2: me unwind a lot of my own trauma. And Maggie
Speaker 2: risked her life by being here today. She almost got
Speaker 2: killed by her gate.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows what we mean, but trust me, it was hilarious.
Speaker 6: Maggie.
Speaker 3: So you wrote a book called Sin Bravely, and that's
Speaker 3: your story in this book is what we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about today. I know Megan and I both resonated
Speaker 3: so much with it because of our own you know,
Speaker 3: Megan's particular fear of hell in my particular just obsessive thinking.
Speaker 3: So can you just start by telling us what was
Speaker 3: the church that your family attended when you were growing up.
Speaker 5: The church that I attended was fairly moderate. Actually it
Speaker 5: was a Baptist church, oddly a Southern Baptist church in
Speaker 5: the Midwest. The church was fairly moderate. But the Christian
Speaker 5: camps and the overall message, even if it wasn't dwelt
Speaker 5: on that you have to say this very specific prayer,
Speaker 5: and you have to say it with a very specific
Speaker 5: sort of sincerity and commitment, or it doesn't work.
Speaker 6: It's going to give me hives just thinking about it.
Speaker 5: I can't And there's no certificate that comes in the mail.
Speaker 5: The most important thing that could ever even conceivably matter,
Speaker 5: the most important thing, and you have no confirmation whether
Speaker 5: your prayer.
Speaker 2: Worked, whether you're spending eternity in flames or you're in heaven.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the matter at hand.
Speaker 2: For a lot of people who are children, even today,
Speaker 2: it's a very strange little thing that we teach kids about.
Speaker 3: Your book, you do such a great job of illustrating how.
Speaker 3: And we'll get into more of these specifics but just generally,
Speaker 3: like how people in the churches and church camps and
Speaker 3: communities that you were a part of would just kind
Speaker 3: of respond to your questions with a thought terminating cliche
Speaker 3: like well, you're just supposed to have faith or just
Speaker 3: let accept Jesus. But when you have a brain like
Speaker 3: yours or mine or megans, it's going to be like,
Speaker 3: but how do you know specifically how many times do
Speaker 3: you say?
Speaker 6: What inflection do you you know?
Speaker 3: Like, you do such a good job of illustrating how
Speaker 3: not everybody is so comfortable feels that certainty so immediately.
Speaker 5: And here's the thing, here's what I was told sometimes
Speaker 5: that was just the killer was when I was told, well,
Speaker 5: if you were really a Christian, the Holy Spirit would
Speaker 5: convict you of your salvation, which was like, oho, So
Speaker 5: the fact that I'm scared of this is an indictment.
Speaker 5: It's an indication that it did not take like that
Speaker 5: little loop that that sets off. Ooh, that's a nasty one.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So what was the first thing that your child brain
Speaker 3: began to sort of fixate on.
Speaker 5: As soon as I said to that prayer, I was
Speaker 5: five years old, and I remember I said it a
Speaker 5: bunch of times. That first night, there was a Sunday
Speaker 5: school class where they had described the notion of eternity
Speaker 5: as they were defining it. And then imagine the worst
Speaker 5: thing you could ever imagine happening. And I imagined being
Speaker 5: separated from my parents because I had done something wrong.
Speaker 5: I had poisoned that Like, I just imagined a horrible thing,
Speaker 5: and then it continuing. I was horrified, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I gotta say this.
Speaker 7: Prayer, and what's the prayer?
Speaker 6: Yeah, what is the prayer?
Speaker 5: Oh Lord Jesus, I accept you into my heart as
Speaker 5: my personal savior. I repent for all of my sins
Speaker 5: and resolve to sin no more.
Speaker 6: Oh wow, that's a big resolution.
Speaker 7: As a five year old, that's hard.
Speaker 5: And of course as an adult, I can think, well,
Speaker 5: I can resolve to sin no more, but of course
Speaker 5: I have the realistic expectation that that's an impossibility. But
Speaker 5: a child's brain and what do I really resolve to
Speaker 5: sin no more? And then there was the concept of
Speaker 5: the deliberate sin, which was a real kicker, and that
Speaker 5: was the idea that if you were truly a Christian,
Speaker 5: you would not deliberately sin with forethought. You could mess up.
Speaker 5: You could, you know, bump your knee and go shit
Speaker 5: and go oh oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That was unconscious.
Speaker 5: You could do something reflexively, but if you were really
Speaker 5: a Christian, you would not go, I am going to
Speaker 5: lie in this situation. Like I remember one when I
Speaker 5: was a kid that I just spun out about we
Speaker 5: had I was like maybe eight, and we had guests
Speaker 5: over and I needed to go to the bathroom and
Speaker 5: I was embarrased for some reason. You know, it was
Speaker 5: just to get like, so I just said, I'm just
Speaker 5: gonna go wash my hands.
Speaker 4: But like, but you secretly peede, yes.
Speaker 5: Secretly this child that's like, I'm just going to wash
Speaker 5: my hands. But afterwards I was like, m I knew
Speaker 5: ahead of time that I was going to lie, and
Speaker 5: I did lie. And a true Christian, someone for whom
Speaker 5: that prayer worked, would not deliberately send and so it
Speaker 5: wasn't here Like when I try to explain to people
Speaker 5: my particular headloop of this particular type of evangelicalism, it's
Speaker 5: not that the sin causes you to be punished. It's
Speaker 5: that the sin is an indication that the grace has
Speaker 5: not worked, and so you will be punished.
Speaker 6: That hurts my brain.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the sin is not an indication that you
Speaker 2: will be punished. The sin is an indication that you
Speaker 2: have not been saved.
Speaker 5: You have not been saved. It's not that the sin
Speaker 5: causes the it's like because you're free and good, but
Speaker 5: if it really worked, you wouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 3: So when you're saved, you commit no sin is the idea,
Speaker 3: no deliberate, No deliberates, So you could do a manslaughter sin, but.
Speaker 2: Not absolutely crime of passion. Fine, absolutely lying about being wrong. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: you know one of the things that I got super
Speaker 2: caught in. And I don't know what the three of
Speaker 2: us have common that made this something for us. But
Speaker 2: like I remember being really little, like three even, and
Speaker 2: they would always say, you know, a spirit like a child.
Speaker 2: You have to have a spirit like a child. That's
Speaker 2: the most Christian thing that Jesus loves. And I'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of a dick, so I must not be
Speaker 2: doing this child thing right because I'm selfish and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I want my toys and all that shit.
Speaker 2: So like from the jump, I was already like, oh no,
Speaker 2: I'm not doing it right.
Speaker 7: I'm not even being a child right totally.
Speaker 5: That picture of like let the children come unto me
Speaker 5: and Jesus with all of these innocent, bright seeming children,
Speaker 5: there's a you know, I know shame is such a
Speaker 5: buzzword these days, but I do feel like that original
Speaker 5: sin thing and not measuring up to have morality like
Speaker 5: that as a child is a real as opposed to
Speaker 5: the Buddhist notion that we're naturally good, that we have
Speaker 5: this natural Buddha nature and it gets sullied and cramped
Speaker 5: and misshapen. But I just think that intrinsic orientation makes
Speaker 5: a big difference.
Speaker 6: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did your parents and your church leaders say
Speaker 3: when you brought up these thoughts to them?
Speaker 5: So my parents were wonderful in the sense that they said,
Speaker 5: you are saved, you are saved, you said it right,
Speaker 5: you did it right, You're fine, let it go, let
Speaker 5: it go, And that was kind of all they could
Speaker 5: do other than rejecting the notion altogether. Right, But even
Speaker 5: with their reassurances, I was like shit. I was like,
Speaker 5: my parents have been wrong about things all the time.
Speaker 5: I have seen, you know, people are wrong. They just
Speaker 5: haven't thought this through, like I have and I had
Speaker 5: this I remember this Ryri study Bible that I had
Speaker 5: that had four different translations of the verses in one
Speaker 5: so it was in four different columns, and so I
Speaker 5: would just read through. You could go to Hell, you know,
Speaker 5: look in Hell in the index, and then I would
Speaker 5: just read all of the verses, and I'd read the
Speaker 5: four different translations, and you know, one would be horrifying,
Speaker 5: and one would be like like the living Bible would
Speaker 5: have something, you know a little, but I would and
Speaker 5: then I would read the commentary comparing the four different
Speaker 5: and try to decipher what the odds are because there
Speaker 5: were so many factors of that prayer.
Speaker 7: You sound like a really chill middle schooler.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew how to party in a way.
Speaker 3: You're OCD taught your really good critical thinking skills though,
Speaker 3: because yeah, like examining the contradictions between everything, some of
Speaker 3: the thoughts that you describe yourself having as a kid,
Speaker 3: I'm like, that is so intelligent, even though it is
Speaker 3: obsessive and like probably was deeply uncomfortable and painful, very
Speaker 3: intelligent thoughts and analysis.
Speaker 5: Like I remember, you know, like one concept that was
Speaker 5: totally beyond well, it's beyond everybody. But the idea I
Speaker 5: remember reading in these translations about the word for eternity,
Speaker 5: what the Greek word was for it. It might have
Speaker 5: been chiros, but but they one translation would be like
Speaker 5: everlasting goes on and on and on. One would be
Speaker 5: like it shatters time, it's beyond time. One would be like,
Speaker 5: you know, it was all these ways to understand the
Speaker 5: nuances of the Greek word that eternity rose from, and
Speaker 5: like going, oh, I hope it's the one that chatters time. Please.
Speaker 5: I would feel like such gratitude to whatever that, you know,
Speaker 5: the new international version. I would be like, but then
Speaker 5: I would look, and then another another word for eternity
Speaker 5: would be used in another you know, it would just yeah.
Speaker 3: Did your parents? Did anyone in your family have OCD?
Speaker 3: Like maybe undiagnosed? Did it seem like it.
Speaker 5: My grandmother who ended up having electroshock therapy and then
Speaker 5: not being able to function again, I believe had different
Speaker 5: She had different psychological struggles, but one of them I
Speaker 5: think was OCD, And so the fear of what happened
Speaker 5: to her was an ever present and she was the one.
Speaker 5: She was the party girl. She smoked and wore red
Speaker 5: lips and perfume, and she had an affair. My dad
Speaker 5: was the product of an affair, you know, so she
Speaker 5: was you know what I wanted to be. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: cool then, but then she ended up living with us,
Speaker 5: you know, sitting in a room in a rocking chair,
Speaker 5: looking at a television that was not turned on. So
Speaker 5: I think, you know, just the way a child's brain
Speaker 5: kind of computes. Nobody ever told me that she was
Speaker 5: punished for her lifestyle, but I believe that was in.
Speaker 3: My head, right right, I mean, yes, how could it
Speaker 3: not be. She was sort of the she represented all
Speaker 3: the things that you were not supposed to be but
Speaker 3: that you were drawn to, but you felt like it
Speaker 3: was a sin and then bam, like that happens to her.
Speaker 3: In that belief system, I think it'd be hard to
Speaker 3: interpret it differently, honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you ever roll through social media only to
Speaker 1: find yourself bombarded by bad news? Hot takes, mommy bloggers,
Speaker 1: influencers and picture perfect families or professionals who are honored
Speaker 1: yet also humbled to share more great news about their career.
Speaker 1: It's hard to not get wrapped up in how everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing, But what about you? How are you feeling,
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to change and what are
Speaker 1: you doing to change it? At Cerebral, we believe making
Speaker 1: time for your mental health is key to your overall
Speaker 1: well being. That's why we make it easier than ever
Speaker 1: to access therapy and doctor prescribed medication tailored to work
Speaker 1: for you. And the best part, Cerebral offers in network
Speaker 1: care so you can focus on feeling better without worrying
Speaker 1: about cost. Seventy two percent of people say they felt
Speaker 1: better in just twelve weeks. So take the first step
Speaker 1: today visit Cerebral dot com slash podcast to see how
Speaker 1: affordable and accessible mental health care can be with insurance.
Speaker 1: Cerebral make time for mind time.
Speaker 3: What were some of the like compulsions that you were
Speaker 3: doing before grace point? What were some of the compulsions
Speaker 3: that you found yourself doing in your everyday life.
Speaker 5: So I had some basic OCD compulsions like curling iron
Speaker 5: and checking the curling iron a million times, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, needing to have proof throughout the day that
Speaker 5: I had unplugged it. So I'd make a little mark
Speaker 5: with the prong so I could look at it later on.
Speaker 5: But then I would think, wait, did I do the
Speaker 5: prong and then replug in the curling ire. So why
Speaker 5: would I those kind of garden variety ones. Those I
Speaker 5: could manage, I mean not managed. But the ones that
Speaker 5: killed me was when it was internal, and it was
Speaker 5: confessing the sins, trying to sincerely confess sins, trying to
Speaker 5: love the Lord your God with all of your heart
Speaker 5: above all things. And the more I was required to
Speaker 5: do that, the more I hated and resent it. Like love,
Speaker 5: what does that even mean? The fact that that we
Speaker 5: were instructed and commanded to love a thing that is
Speaker 5: a spontaneous response from gratitude. To prescribe it with a
Speaker 5: punishment attached to it is such a mind screw. It's
Speaker 5: such a mind screw. So I was trying so hard
Speaker 5: to love God.
Speaker 6: I'm loving you, I love you, I swear trying to
Speaker 6: love you, and I feel it.
Speaker 5: And then I would have Oh, there were thoughts that
Speaker 5: I would have that were just even now. It just
Speaker 5: sent a shudder through me. Is I would have a
Speaker 5: thought like God, we spend all of this time imagining
Speaker 5: how hard it is for Jesus to be on the
Speaker 5: cross for three days. This still is in my body.
Speaker 5: I'm still like but I would think he was on
Speaker 5: the cross for three days. People have unbelievable suffering that
Speaker 5: goes on for people are in jails and they're orchard
Speaker 5: people lose their child. You know, they're so much suffering.
Speaker 5: We're how to feel bored for three days.
Speaker 2: This is one of the only conversations I ever had
Speaker 2: with my father where he was like saying good night
Speaker 2: to me one night and I would stay up all
Speaker 2: night six am thinking about how and how it was
Speaker 2: inevitable and being scared. And I just said to him, like,
Speaker 2: I don't think Jesus dying was that big of a deal,
Speaker 2: Like I would have done the same thing if it
Speaker 2: saved everybody. And I'm an asshole, so like I don't understand.
Speaker 2: And he was like, that's so funny, and he said,
Speaker 2: I totally understand what you mean, shocking, And he was like,
Speaker 2: what was so hard about it was that Jesus was
Speaker 2: had to be without God for those you know, days,
Speaker 2: And I was.
Speaker 7: Like, isn't he God?
Speaker 2: I'm so confused And it's like I have math homework
Speaker 2: to be doing, you know what I mean, Like I
Speaker 2: have shit to do?
Speaker 7: Like what am I doing?
Speaker 5: Oh my god? This makes me so happy?
Speaker 6: To hear you say that, Yes, totally.
Speaker 5: I got the exact same answer. Well, he went from
Speaker 5: the height of eternal bliss into uh separation from himself God.
Speaker 3: And that's worse than years of torture and isolation that
Speaker 3: a human would experience.
Speaker 5: Right, that's that's nothing. Three days and we're supposed to go.
Speaker 7: And you know you're going to heaven forever after.
Speaker 3: It, Like I would one wants to do it, we
Speaker 3: would all do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love that. That's what just made me so happy. Listen,
Speaker 5: three days I would do it, and I'm an.
Speaker 3: Assholes, like a whole world for all eternity would be saved.
Speaker 7: You have to.
Speaker 2: And even he didn't want to do it, he was
Speaker 2: like do I have to? And that was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have to, And I was like, okay, fying, I
Speaker 2: totally get how But then those those I would get
Speaker 2: really angry. How dare God send everybody I know to hell?
Speaker 2: Because only the people in my religion are going to heaven?
Speaker 2: I hate you God, And then this other side of
Speaker 2: my brain would clamp down and be like, no, I
Speaker 2: don't I love you God, don't see me to Hell.
Speaker 7: I'm just kidding, Like, who is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Totally, totally. It's that vicious cycle of I'm indicted by
Speaker 5: my sympathy really too with that, I mean I was
Speaker 5: scared for myself obviously, but even like this idea of God,
Speaker 5: how could you do this to everyone and then love them?
Speaker 5: Love them, love.
Speaker 3: Them like like as in like how could people be
Speaker 3: not saved who are in other religions?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That killed me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember asking about that as a kid too,
Speaker 3: and I Mormon's had a better answer to it than I.
Speaker 6: Think general Christian churches.
Speaker 7: What's their an?
Speaker 3: The answer was, well, we do baptisms for the dead
Speaker 3: so they get the chance to be exposed to the
Speaker 3: true Church in the afterlife. And that's why we do
Speaker 3: baptisms for the dead for all people who've ever lived
Speaker 3: that we can register.
Speaker 5: You know that all of the answers and like that
Speaker 5: one had to do with choice, they had to do
Speaker 5: with well, you had the choice. But the deeper thing
Speaker 5: that I think I intuited as a child is all
Speaker 5: of our choices are based on our circumstances. We choose
Speaker 5: things because of our genetics and our environment.
Speaker 3: Again, how did you know this at such a young age?
Speaker 6: This is crazy?
Speaker 5: Well, I think I just like it's all like I
Speaker 5: felt like, Oh, I remember watching a thing about Jeffrey
Speaker 5: Dahmer because that was around where I grew up in Chicago.
Speaker 5: That was Milwaukee. It was on the news a lot,
Speaker 5: and they talked about he had been dropped on his
Speaker 5: head and I as a child, and there they were
Speaker 5: talking about a number of high percentage of serial killers
Speaker 5: have some head trauma as an infant, and it felt like, whoa,
Speaker 5: so all of the choices that he made that could
Speaker 5: have come So aren't we all a product of all
Speaker 5: of these different things that happened to us? Are we
Speaker 5: better than Jeffrey Dahmer? I wasn't dropped on my head?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is my current worldview. But for
Speaker 3: a child within Christianity at a young age to understand
Speaker 3: that is really impressive. I also have to ask you
Speaker 3: about the T shirts because I was.
Speaker 6: Absolutely losing my mind. Feel the force, Jesus, Jesus, what
Speaker 6: was the sharp? Please explain?
Speaker 5: Okay? The thing that it had two different thoughts, So
Speaker 5: I think it was like the Christian bookstore, the Agape
Speaker 5: bookstore was trying to make things hit. They were trying
Speaker 5: to make things so it said and like these black
Speaker 5: letters feel the Force, and then underneath it just said Jesus.
Speaker 7: And it was a shirt.
Speaker 5: It was a T shirt. And the idea was this
Speaker 5: was how you could bring souls to Jesus by wearing
Speaker 5: something that indicated that you were a Christian and then
Speaker 5: behaving so well that everyone would go, hmmm, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: What is this Christianity thing? As if kids are responding
Speaker 5: to some moral secrity that they're like, oh, she was
Speaker 5: behaving in line with her morals. Give me some of that.
Speaker 5: But I figured if I was doing that that I
Speaker 5: didn't have to do the horrible direct witness, which was
Speaker 5: where you went up directly to somebody and shared your faith,
Speaker 5: often through a Bible verse that you cleverly would incorporate
Speaker 5: into conversation. Like I remember on the on a plane, they're, oh,
Speaker 5: if anytime you sat next to a stranger, that was
Speaker 5: an opportunity to witness.
Speaker 6: So oh no, not on a plane a five hour flight.
Speaker 5: Oh God, imagine having having this girl next to you
Speaker 5: and saying, do you have a best friend? And then
Speaker 5: whatever they answered, I do. His name is Jesus, and
Speaker 5: he never lets me down. I know best friends let
Speaker 5: you down, but Jesus is there.
Speaker 8: Forever.
Speaker 3: So you were trying to avoid this direct witnessing because
Speaker 3: it was obviously embarrassing the worst by choosing a T
Speaker 3: shirt to do silent witnessing, which is also very embarrassing.
Speaker 3: It was, and yes, my favorite thing though was that
Speaker 3: first you were obsessing about whether you should or shouldn't
Speaker 3: get it because it would like mean something about you
Speaker 3: if you didn't get it out of fear of embarrassment.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 6: And then it led you to buy even more embarrassing
Speaker 6: T shirts on purpose. Please explain.
Speaker 5: Well, I felt a dinge of embarrassment and I was like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, that means I'm embarrassed. I've got to prove
Speaker 5: to God that I'm not embarrassed, so I'll get a
Speaker 5: more embarrassing T shirt and my you know, I thought
Speaker 5: it would prove to God if I just kept doing
Speaker 5: increasing levels of horrible things to wear. There was what
Speaker 5: was one, Oh you think Duran Duran Rocks tried Jesus.
Speaker 5: It was like, it's like at the height of Duran
Speaker 5: Duran when everyone had like one of the four guys
Speaker 5: that they had a crush on.
Speaker 2: Me, making the like connon is just so and it
Speaker 2: sounds like it became like a compulsion, like if I
Speaker 2: don't wear this, then I'm super fact. So the shirt
Speaker 2: is not the coolest thing, but I absolutely have to
Speaker 2: wear it because I don't want to wear it.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 3: The bad feeling means I'm being faithful, right exactly, I
Speaker 3: mean when in Barratt when like, it means you're righteous
Speaker 3: to do a thing you don't want to do. It
Speaker 3: just is a recipe for a bad time, a very
Speaker 3: bad time that feels right.
Speaker 5: And love God for it. At the end of it,
Speaker 5: do the thing you don't want to do and then
Speaker 5: love them for wanting you to do.
Speaker 6: It, whatever that means.
Speaker 2: And if you get mad, that's bad. So don't let
Speaker 2: yourself get mad that he's making you do this.
Speaker 6: Again, get an even more embarrassing T shirt.
Speaker 5: Or start directly witnessing, right. But I eventually moved on
Speaker 5: to pushing myself to do the direct witness because I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm I'm embarrassed to do it. God's going to see
Speaker 5: that I'm embarrassed. I got to do it so I
Speaker 5: would witness to my friends.
Speaker 3: What's so funny is that you were in a way
Speaker 3: doing like the Christian version of exposure therapy, right, because
Speaker 3: you're doing the thing you.
Speaker 6: Don't want to do that you're.
Speaker 3: Afraid of doing to sensitize yourself to it.
Speaker 2: Except it's backwards, yeah yeah, making you more obsessive.
Speaker 5: Right right, because exposure therapy. Well, wait, would exposure therapy
Speaker 5: be not doing it and tolerating the discomfort?
Speaker 6: No, it would, it would, But this does feel.
Speaker 5: Like exposure therapy, so what is it?
Speaker 3: It's tolerating well, because you're personal your actual underlying fear,
Speaker 3: your core fee underneath that is like of going to hell,
Speaker 3: or of like not being faithful, So you're acting on
Speaker 3: a compulsion. But outwardly, oh, it could look like the
Speaker 3: fear is of wearing the shirts, so you go toward
Speaker 3: that feeling. But because your core fear is not actually
Speaker 3: about the shirt, it's about right.
Speaker 5: Right right, I'm with you.
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Speaker 3: You wrote about like a pastor who you kind of
Speaker 3: voiced your doubts too, and he literally just told you
Speaker 3: to not feel the way you feel and that God
Speaker 3: sees and knows everything that we think. I can't imagine
Speaker 3: that helped UH very much.
Speaker 5: It was I remember it as being one of the
Speaker 5: worst days of my life because it took some courage
Speaker 5: to tell him that, UH. And he basically said that
Speaker 5: my feelings were an indication that I was not saved.
Speaker 5: That the Holy Spirit, if you are saved comes in
Speaker 5: and assures you of your salvation. So it was basically
Speaker 5: check your heart and then what in the world I
Speaker 5: was supposed to do with that? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, having any doubt means you are inherently your fears
Speaker 3: are true basically, Yeah, because you had.
Speaker 5: Them, because I had them.
Speaker 7: Yeah it sucks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I still I still care, Like if you were
Speaker 5: to like anger that I hold up, you know, dry
Speaker 5: to lego of. But that moment, I felt like he
Speaker 5: really could have helped me. And I wish pastors across
Speaker 5: the world would have more of an awareness even if
Speaker 5: you're you know, obviously I think there are problems with
Speaker 5: the theology itself, but even within the theology, if pastors
Speaker 5: were aware of OCD, if they were aware of scrupulosity,
Speaker 5: I mean, if they were aware of the horror of
Speaker 5: their notion of hell. But yeah, I would. I wish
Speaker 5: there was more education in the clergy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did it get to the point where you
Speaker 3: decided that you needed to go into a facility to
Speaker 3: be treated for your sinful thoughts?
Speaker 5: It was such a cinematic moment when I think back
Speaker 5: on it now. So I was in college, I had
Speaker 5: started having sex with my boyfriend. But I justified it
Speaker 5: in my mind by saying, we're married in God's eyes
Speaker 5: because we're planning on being together forever. But I still
Speaker 5: felt the guilt. I pushed it down. I started I
Speaker 5: had been drinking, which you know, it was like, you
Speaker 5: can drink, don't do it, not too intoxication. And then
Speaker 5: it was like, well, anyway, all my fears of what
Speaker 5: I was doing, that I was straying, that I was backsliding,
Speaker 5: that word backsliding. I pushed it down, and then I
Speaker 5: went to see this art house movie, Akira Kira SAWA's Dreams.
Speaker 5: It has nothing on the surface to do with the afterlife,
Speaker 5: but apparently he created the film as an evocation of
Speaker 5: fantasies of the afterlife. Who would have known.
Speaker 7: It's a girl unconscious, my unconscious.
Speaker 5: It's so like when people say the power of art,
Speaker 5: like boy, this dude nailed it. But it's a girl
Speaker 5: running through a garden. It's a boy under a cherry
Speaker 5: blossom tree that becomes a spirit. It's all these surreal images.
Speaker 5: And then it's these hikers walking in a snowstorm and
Speaker 5: they gradually gets colder and colder, and they gradually freeze
Speaker 5: to death. And I have this thought of did they
Speaker 5: accept Jesus as their personal savior? And my body just
Speaker 5: went a flame with anxiety, and I was like, I've backslid.
Speaker 5: I've backslid. I didn't ever or I never really meant
Speaker 5: it in the first place. I never was saved. I'm
Speaker 5: never saved. And I heard this was the cinematic part.
Speaker 5: Is I heard a scream. I heard a scream in
Speaker 5: the theater, and then I realized it was coming from
Speaker 5: my own mouth, and I stumbled out of the theater
Speaker 5: without my code. It was the middle of winter in Ithaca,
Speaker 5: New York, and I was just out in this snow,
Speaker 5: rather similar to the people that had just gotten frozen
Speaker 5: in the snowstorm. And I can feel it in my
Speaker 5: body now. Is. I was like, I knew it. I
Speaker 5: was like, my life's never going to be the same.
Speaker 5: I'm like everything's changing. And I stopped having sex with
Speaker 5: my boyfriend. I stopped drinking, I stopped swearing. I started
Speaker 5: reading books that I wasn't I started doing Bible study.
Speaker 5: I was like, I got to get back on the
Speaker 5: right path. And I was like no, no, And I
Speaker 5: was just like, you know, I couldn't need I was
Speaker 5: vomiting and I was very very ill, and I called
Speaker 5: my parents, who really came through for me. They found
Speaker 5: I mean, there were problems with the facility that I
Speaker 5: went to, but it's it's what I needed. I was like,
Speaker 5: I need help, and I don't need once a week therapy.
Speaker 5: I need help, and I can't go to a secular
Speaker 5: facility because they'll be like, hell's not real, get over it.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I need I need to work with it.
Speaker 5: So they found me a place. It was in Wheaton, Illinois,
Speaker 5: which is the greatest number of churches which is per
Speaker 5: capita in the United States, and so they just have
Speaker 5: tons of different programs and the place that I went to.
Speaker 5: The thing that I am grateful for two for them
Speaker 5: to this day is everybody there said you were saved,
Speaker 5: you were okay. If they had not done that, I
Speaker 5: don't know. I don't know what would have happened to me.
Speaker 5: They at least gave me that they certainly didn't object
Speaker 5: to the notion of it. I mean that was that
Speaker 5: they never would have done that. But they medicated me,
Speaker 5: which I needed. I was able to get my appetite back.
Speaker 5: We talked about OCD. I learned about scrupulosity. I learned
Speaker 5: that Martin Luther suffered from it. And then I had
Speaker 5: one therapist who is just really saved the day for
Speaker 5: me and told me about Martin Luther's doctrine of pecaphor
Speaker 5: de tay, which is the brave sin, and it is
Speaker 5: sin bravely in order to know the forgiveness of God.
Speaker 5: And he essentially told me this was exposure therapy exactly
Speaker 5: as he said, the most important thing is your relationship
Speaker 5: with God, and you are destroying it by being worried
Speaker 5: about being punished or that you're not saved. You need
Speaker 5: to do all of the sins that you want to
Speaker 5: do and not worry about repercussions.
Speaker 3: I want to know more about the period right before
Speaker 3: this movie theater incident, like were you having panic attacks?
Speaker 6: Like what was going on?
Speaker 3: No, it just like something just got triggered by that
Speaker 3: movie and that thought in there.
Speaker 7: Yeah wow wow, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I had panic attacks constantly after that before I think
Speaker 5: I just had a I think there was an underlying
Speaker 5: annxiety that was brewing because I was suppressing it. But no,
Speaker 5: I was really happy. I was happy I had gotten
Speaker 5: engaged to my boyfriend. I was you know, I was happy,
Speaker 5: and then it broke just in a second. So a
Speaker 5: strange situation for a nineteen year old college kid. I
Speaker 5: was by far the youngest person there. I was grateful
Speaker 5: to have some form of care. The medication did really help.
Speaker 5: And then I had a best friend there was She
Speaker 5: was my buddy just from day one, and she was
Speaker 5: I think she was probably thirty five. She seems so
Speaker 5: old at the time, such an adult to be friends
Speaker 5: with a thirty five year old, but she was so
Speaker 5: kind to me. And later on in my journey, when
Speaker 5: I started picturing God as a female, that was one
Speaker 5: of the steps that I took along my way, I
Speaker 5: would picture her as part of that image because her
Speaker 5: attitude towards me and my suffering was it really it
Speaker 5: really helped. It really helped me in the experience. I
Speaker 5: think she facilitated facilitated my change in some ways.
Speaker 3: You write about this amusing quotation marks therapist Bethany, who
Speaker 3: kept pushing this narrative on, like she wouldn't listen to
Speaker 3: anything you were saying, basically and decided you were a
Speaker 3: boleamic and it just not. I mean, I wanted to
Speaker 3: watch them movie of your book and hate her character
Speaker 3: so much you know, can you just talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about her role versus.
Speaker 6: Like having a friend and like just the difference between.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, Bethany was the main therapist that I worked with,
Speaker 5: and I felt like I could see her textbook in
Speaker 5: therapist school that she was working from when she talked
Speaker 5: to me, Like I could almost see her eyes go
Speaker 5: off and go on page twelve, young women who are
Speaker 5: throwing up. But I kept telling her about my experience,
Speaker 5: and she had decided what was going on with me.
Speaker 5: Certainly a lot of nineteen year old young women are
Speaker 5: worried about their body image issues, and I really didn't.
Speaker 5: I was so skinny, I wasn't eating and I was
Speaker 5: throwing up. And she felt that the main problem was
Speaker 5: not the theology, but was body image issues. And it
Speaker 5: just wasn't true.
Speaker 2: The theology was what was making you throw up because
Speaker 2: it was so stressful.
Speaker 5: Yes, I just couldn't keep food in my stomach. But
Speaker 5: the more that I said, look, I am not worried
Speaker 5: about being fat, she was like, well, this seems to
Speaker 5: be a really loaded topic for you. Denial, denial, denial.
Speaker 5: You seem to be getting very upset, right, you know,
Speaker 5: And she had a full length mirror that she brought
Speaker 5: in at one point, you know, she was like, tell
Speaker 5: me what you see? It like, I don't want to
Speaker 5: look in a mirror. There you go, you don't want
Speaker 5: to look in a mirror.
Speaker 6: Oh there?
Speaker 5: And I'm like, I didn't.
Speaker 3: But you look up confirmation bias in the dictionary just
Speaker 3: a picture of her.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So I kept and I just felt like she
Speaker 5: didn't understand the would I would tell her even if
Speaker 5: I am saved, I'm like, what about my boyfriend, what
Speaker 5: about my fiance? What you know? And she would say, well,
Speaker 5: we all have a choice, and I was, but the
Speaker 5: choices that we make are conditioned by all these other things.
Speaker 5: We can't just say he has a choice. That doesn't.
Speaker 5: But so, what really helped me was this other doctor
Speaker 5: who told me about the notion of sin bravely because
Speaker 5: he under he understood what I was saying, and he said, yes,
Speaker 5: that is difficult. Now he didn't say, I mean I
Speaker 5: wish he had gone as far as good. This is
Speaker 5: a scare tactic from the Middle Ages that is crippling
Speaker 5: children all across the country. It's not true. It's not true,
Speaker 5: young lady. You know, I wish she could have said
Speaker 5: something like that, but he he did a lot.
Speaker 7: Better than Bethany.
Speaker 5: Than Bethany.
Speaker 3: There's a scene in your book of you in the
Speaker 3: support group at this place, which, by the way, the
Speaker 3: characters with what characters the.
Speaker 6: People in the group were.
Speaker 3: But there's a man named Mickey who sort of like
Speaker 3: feverishly shouts that all you have to do is accept
Speaker 3: Jesus into your heart. And your response is that you've
Speaker 3: done that ten thousand times and you just can't be
Speaker 3: one hundred percent sure you got it right, which is
Speaker 3: just like eat a nutshell. I'm like, yes, that is,
Speaker 3: that is what OCD is.
Speaker 5: That's what OCD is. That's and it's such fertile ground
Speaker 5: for OCD to grow in.
Speaker 6: Yes, talk more about that.
Speaker 5: I feel like probably whatever predisposition I have towards OCD,
Speaker 5: in whatever environment I was raised in, it would have
Speaker 5: come out in some way or another, is my guess.
Speaker 5: But it would not have grown into the months stracity.
Speaker 5: It would not have crippled my psyche for so many
Speaker 5: years without this fundamentalist thinking, without the notion of hell,
Speaker 5: like like once I did behavioral cognitive behavioral therapy with
Speaker 5: the curling iron thing.
Speaker 2: Yet you figure it out, Like seeing if your door
Speaker 2: is locked forty thousand times a night is much different
Speaker 2: than wondering about eternity and your soul being on fire forever.
Speaker 7: It's just two different things.
Speaker 3: Right, Accepting uncertainty about whether something was plugged in versus
Speaker 3: accepting uncertainty about whether you are eternally damned and will
Speaker 3: literally burn forever and never see your family again.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not I don't.
Speaker 3: I do not want to diminish how painful the first
Speaker 3: kind is, because I know people who struggle with that,
Speaker 3: and it's very, very painful.
Speaker 6: They're afraid they're gonna kill everyone they love. But it's just.
Speaker 3: There's no real response to someone who believes in this
Speaker 3: notion of hell that you could go to for any
Speaker 3: like arbitrary sin.
Speaker 5: Right, how do you habituate to that notion? How do
Speaker 5: you go okay? Well, like I can go okay, I'd
Speaker 5: leave the curling iron in the house, burns down, we
Speaker 5: get a new house, or you know, anything is manageable,
Speaker 5: but Hell, by definition is unmanageable.
Speaker 6: Right, There's no way out. Once you're there. You're there.
Speaker 3: And that was one of the things, oh that bothered you, Right,
Speaker 3: that God didn't extend sympathy to the thirsty rich man
Speaker 3: in hell.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like, nope, too late. Oh can I tell
Speaker 5: you my favorite moment. This might be my favorite moment
Speaker 5: in all of literature. I'm so glad I get to
Speaker 5: say this. Okay, So that story, that Lazarus story that
Speaker 5: I hate it. So if your listeners don't know it. Basically,
Speaker 5: there's a rich man and there's a poor man, and
Speaker 5: the rich man treats the poor man Lazareth, not Lazarus
Speaker 5: that rose from the dead, but Lazareth treats him badly.
Speaker 5: Then at the end, Lazareth goes to heaven. The rich
Speaker 5: man is in hell. And at one point the rich
Speaker 5: man goes to Lazareth, my tongue is burning. Can you
Speaker 5: just give me a drop of your heavenly water from
Speaker 5: above to soothe my burning self? And Lazareth ask God,
Speaker 5: and God's like tell him no, no, It is the cruelest,
Speaker 5: most horrible thing. So I was reading in my sin
Speaker 5: bravely period after the hospital, I was reading literature that
Speaker 5: couldn't be considered blasphemous, and I was reading The Last
Speaker 5: Temptation of Christ and they have this scene and they
Speaker 5: go up to the point in the story where Jesus
Speaker 5: is telling the parable, and then it extends and it
Speaker 5: says John, Jesus's favorite disciple, says, Lord, that cannot be
Speaker 5: the end of the story. Surely God's mercy spills over,
Speaker 5: and Jesus says, ah, John, you among all the disciples knew, no,
Speaker 5: the story cannot end there. And God said to Lazauth,
Speaker 5: of course, welcome him into the gates and welcome them all.
Speaker 5: And I just I just cried and cried this idea
Speaker 5: that just the beginning was reported and only one disciple
Speaker 5: was open hearted enough to go, No, that can't be
Speaker 5: how it ends. Those retelling of those stories have real
Speaker 5: power for me, because now when I think of that story,
Speaker 5: I have that ending attached to it.
Speaker 2: It's really odd because the two by twos, which I
Speaker 2: grew up in, is very focused on how like if
Speaker 2: you were to say I'm scared, I'm going to Hell,
Speaker 2: they'd be like you probably are, most of us are, like,
Speaker 2: everyone's going to Hell is essentially there the thing.
Speaker 4: Really, Yeah, it's it's very hell based.
Speaker 2: But the verses that you were kind of hand picking
Speaker 2: and focusing on are things that they also handpicked and
Speaker 2: would and would focus upon, so you were kind of
Speaker 2: doing the same research.
Speaker 7: They were the scariest shit. Scarious, Yeah, the scariest shit.
Speaker 2: And I remember they would there was a really hard
Speaker 2: influence on children, obey your parents, and that God knows
Speaker 2: every hair that you have on your head. That was like,
Speaker 2: and so when I wanted to talk to God, I
Speaker 2: would pull a hair out of my head so that
Speaker 2: my hair count change. Oh my God, that I would
Speaker 2: have his attention, and I'd be like, now that I
Speaker 2: have your attention, here's what I need to tell you.
Speaker 6: The Maggan I didn't know that.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of the verses that you were focused on,
Speaker 2: I was also focused on. But the difference is it
Speaker 2: just feels like you were innately finding them on your
Speaker 2: own with your I mean the Bible that you got,
Speaker 2: this huge Bible with every single different thing. It's it's
Speaker 2: horrible and sad, but it's also just so funny that
Speaker 2: you were doing this.
Speaker 5: You know. The verse that killed me, the hardest one
Speaker 5: for me was the God would rather you be He
Speaker 5: wants you to be hot for the Lord, rather you
Speaker 5: be cold than lukewarm. If you were lukewarm, he will
Speaker 5: spit you out of his mouth. Bikes, and of course
Speaker 5: I felt lukewarm. I wasn't on fire, but I was trying.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like forcing yourself to be in love
Speaker 2: with someone, like, right, right, you're.
Speaker 5: Got a here in this, I'm in this marriage, loveless marriage.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Isn't that enough? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You go from I'm assuming being in the dorms and
Speaker 2: being fun to this single bed room by yourself, away
Speaker 2: from all of your friends, with an entirely new group
Speaker 2: of people, with an entirely new focus on life. What
Speaker 2: I mean, what does that even feel like to be
Speaker 2: nineteen years old and to be addressing all of these issues.
Speaker 5: I felt like I it was like if everyone's in
Speaker 5: a race and then one person schluffs off to the side.
Speaker 5: I definitely felt like life was continuing for my I.
Speaker 5: You know, I've heard people say this about being physically sick.
Speaker 5: It's like you descend into a different world. There's the
Speaker 5: world of the well and the world of the unwell,
Speaker 5: and you can't remember a time when you were well,
Speaker 5: and you can't have met It just felt like I
Speaker 5: had slipped into a different sort of existence and I
Speaker 5: was desperately in love with my fiance, who continued on
Speaker 5: to do what we had been planning to do that summer,
Speaker 5: which was be ares in a dorm. We had gotten
Speaker 5: accepted and we were gonna do this together. And he
Speaker 5: continued on and he was dating people and he was
Speaker 5: kind of my It sucks that he was kind of
Speaker 5: my only big not my only, but he was my
Speaker 5: biggest emotional support. So I would still call him up crying,
Speaker 5: and you know, I would measure like is this working?
Speaker 5: Am I getting better? Am I still? And it's not
Speaker 5: like when I left, I was cured by any means,
Speaker 5: but I was eating and managing enough. I had some
Speaker 5: coping skills.
Speaker 6: How did you get officially diagnosed?
Speaker 5: So there was a there were a number of different
Speaker 5: people that worked there, but there was a psychiatrist that well,
Speaker 5: they did the is it the m mp I like
Speaker 5: a like a three hour kind of battery of tests
Speaker 5: that ask you various different questions and then she gave
Speaker 5: me an evaluation and the test results came back. You know, oddly,
Speaker 5: it's so funny. You know, those tests have weird questions
Speaker 5: like do you think Abraham Lincoln is a better man
Speaker 5: or George Washington? You know, it's these like we it's
Speaker 5: like weird things that they've just determined if you answer
Speaker 5: this to this question, you're more likely to have blah
Speaker 5: blah blah blah. It's like they're indirect questions. Yeah, it's weird,
Speaker 5: so you don't quite know what they're testing. But I
Speaker 5: remember as I was doing it, being terrified that I
Speaker 5: was lying, you know, being like, do I really think
Speaker 5: that George Washington is a better? Like? Am I trust?
Speaker 5: You know, like being tripped up in the thing itself
Speaker 5: as I was.
Speaker 3: Doing Was it a relief when you learned that, like
Speaker 3: this is this was something that your brain was doing,
Speaker 3: Like did you believe that this was more of a
Speaker 3: product of you know, these this sort of obsessive thinking
Speaker 3: style thinking habit that you had instead of like, you know,
Speaker 3: being directly connected to the reality of sin.
Speaker 5: Yes, it was definitely helpful. That was the one really
Speaker 5: good thing that they did for me. They compared it
Speaker 5: to hand washing and that you know, you're never going
Speaker 5: to be sure that you've gotten every single last germ. Now,
Speaker 5: of course, my answer was, well, it's okay if you
Speaker 5: haven't gotten every single last germ if you're handwashing, it's
Speaker 5: not okay if you haven't gotten that prayer, right, right,
Speaker 5: so it was not the perfect solution, but it did
Speaker 5: ameliorate my distress.
Speaker 2: It was one thing I wanted to say something about
Speaker 2: the medication that you eventually ended up going on, which
Speaker 2: I have as well, But you didn't want to take
Speaker 2: it at first because you were scared that you would
Speaker 2: become less afraid of Hell.
Speaker 7: Might be going there.
Speaker 2: So that's a double bind that you have in your
Speaker 2: brain where it's.
Speaker 7: Just like, no, I have to stay diligent.
Speaker 2: I don't want anything that calms me down, because then
Speaker 2: maybe I'll think that I'm not going to hell, and
Speaker 2: then I'll go to Hell. And your doctor was able
Speaker 2: to make a very important point, which was like, well,
Speaker 2: the cortisol in your body is also making you make
Speaker 2: decisions that aren't in reality, so maybe kind of finding
Speaker 2: the balance would be a more realistic thought. Yep.
Speaker 5: It was a good argument and a fair one, and
Speaker 5: I it was my way in. Yeah. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: that's a distorting drug too, all.
Speaker 4: Right, of course, Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 3: Well, so we've said the wordscrupulosity a few times, and
Speaker 3: I just want to I'm going to read something from
Speaker 3: TREATIOCD dot com, which is a no from no CD.
Speaker 7: I'm sure we've all been on it several times.
Speaker 6: What is scrupulosity OCD? Okay?
Speaker 3: If you're experiencing obsessions centered on morals, religious codes, and
Speaker 3: your ability to adhere to them, you may be dealing
Speaker 3: with a subtype of OCD known as scrupulosity OCD or
Speaker 3: religious OCD. Scrupulosity OCD typically involves intrusive thoughts and compulsive
Speaker 3: behaviors focused on religious codes, spiritual beliefs, or questions of morality.
Speaker 3: For example, people with this OCD subtype often have recurring
Speaker 3: fears about sinning, making God angry, or otherwise going against
Speaker 3: their religious's rules. However, scrupulosity can also manifest us more
Speaker 3: general fears about ethics, proper behavior, responsibility for others, or
Speaker 3: other questions relating to values, like anxieties about veganism and environmentalism. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: if you go down to the symptoms, it seems like
Speaker 3: this must be a recurring theme. Veganism as like a
Speaker 3: moral code, because there's there's like did I do something wrong?
Speaker 3: Have I disappointed God? Am I committing a sin? If
Speaker 3: I'm a vegan? Am I a bad person for accidentally
Speaker 3: eating honey? Which totally makes sense. There's so many ways
Speaker 3: in which this can manifest itself, depending on what your
Speaker 3: particular code of morality is, you know, like if you're
Speaker 3: anti racist and you have OCD and a racist thought
Speaker 3: pops into your head, like, I'm sure exactly the same
Speaker 3: thing can come up.
Speaker 6: But so that is sort of the realm that we
Speaker 6: are dealing with.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to say you got lucky, but like,
Speaker 3: your religion wasn't that extreme compared to many of the
Speaker 3: people we've had on this show, where the rules are
Speaker 3: so so strict and the you know, thought control is
Speaker 3: and life control is so so strict that it almost
Speaker 3: almost be impossible to not develop OCD in response.
Speaker 6: To paying it in it.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, but I do think it's more common
Speaker 3: than maybe any of us realized a few years ago,
Speaker 3: because the more we have these conversations, the more and
Speaker 3: more people we find will like have had obsessions of
Speaker 3: these kind.
Speaker 5: Obsessions of these kind in terms of religion, are in
Speaker 5: terms of like the veganism that you're talking.
Speaker 3: About, or religion in terms of like people who are
Speaker 3: coming out of religions, but also in general, like cancel culture.
Speaker 3: OCD is a thing where you're like worried that you'll
Speaker 3: say something wrong or you you'll do something wrong and
Speaker 3: yeah you'll get canceled or you know, like there's there's
Speaker 3: so many versions of it, but I in particular on
Speaker 3: this podcast, because we deal with religion, we see these
Speaker 3: patterns kind of come.
Speaker 6: Up a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think it's so interesting the connection between particularly
Speaker 5: scrupulous I mean, I know scrupulosity is a type of OCD,
Speaker 5: but the connection between fear of hell and and finding
Speaker 5: some sort of pattern to manage it, whether it's directly
Speaker 5: related to the thoughts or whether it's some like did
Speaker 5: you ever see the movie Jesus Camp You probably did?
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 2: Yes, And there's that kid who won't who like he's
Speaker 2: like a preacher.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, there's that kid. But there's a
Speaker 5: moment when one of the girls who's kind of pushed
Speaker 5: to witness when she doesn't want to witness, goes outside
Speaker 5: and she needs to get a certain number of snowflakes
Speaker 5: on her tongue before she'll go back inside. And it
Speaker 5: was such a I saw that and I was like, oh, there, there,
Speaker 5: it blooms, there, it blooms.
Speaker 3: I mean, anytime you're told that someone is literally in
Speaker 3: your brain and can see every thought that you have,
Speaker 3: and you're a human being. So some of the thoughts
Speaker 3: that pop into your brain that are just the natural
Speaker 3: result of being a human whose brain works. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean some of those thoughts. The first thought is not
Speaker 3: going to be your best thought. And then oh God
Speaker 3: saw that, Oh yeah, God heard that. I got to
Speaker 3: do something about that to let God know that that
Speaker 3: thought wasn't what I really think, you.
Speaker 5: Know, totally, and then that kind of mind screw of like, well,
Speaker 5: it's like with a T shirt thing with me. At
Speaker 5: one point I was like, wait, does God know I'm embarrased?
Speaker 5: Like he can see He's not just looking at the outside.
Speaker 5: He's looking. He's gonna know I feel embarrassed. I'm you know,
Speaker 5: there's there's all those different layers of how can you
Speaker 5: trick God? Can you deceive God? Right, it's the don't
Speaker 5: think about pink elephants on the wall. As soon as
Speaker 5: you say that, they're gonna come stampeding in.
Speaker 3: And and to add on to that, the metaphor that
Speaker 3: we always you know comes up in OCD a lot,
Speaker 3: and we've talked about this podcast, is when you have
Speaker 3: a beach ball in the ocean, and you try to
Speaker 3: push the beach ball.
Speaker 6: Down into the water, it's just gonna.
Speaker 3: Zoom right back up like there there really isn't That's
Speaker 3: not how it works. You can't get rid of a
Speaker 3: thought by just like trying not to think about it,
Speaker 3: you know, it just makes it come back. More so
Speaker 3: if anyone's suffering from scrupulosity, just no, yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: your brain braining.
Speaker 2: Do you guys think if you have a thought. There
Speaker 2: was a pair of twins where you went who were
Speaker 2: like completely destroyed by the fact that they kept envisioning
Speaker 2: themselves having sex with their mother.
Speaker 7: Horrible, horrible thought.
Speaker 2: Do you think that they should have just seen that
Speaker 2: fantasy out to the end without guilt, and that would
Speaker 2: have been kind of the beach ball up to the
Speaker 2: thing and you Okay.
Speaker 5: I wonder I mean that was the problem with that facility. Well,
Speaker 5: the slogan was psychiatry where the Bible comes first, which
Speaker 5: is a problematic attitude to have. So I felt like
Speaker 5: some of the treatment, including the treatment of the twins,
Speaker 5: had that moral overlay that could have caused more problems
Speaker 5: than helped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the thing is this, like the thing
Speaker 3: with OCD is that it attaches onto the thing you
Speaker 3: value the most. So whatever that is, whatever you don't
Speaker 3: want to happen the most, that's the thing that's going
Speaker 3: to make you think is going to happen. So yes,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to do like weird stuff with
Speaker 3: your mom and you think it would be horrible to
Speaker 3: do that, that's the first thing that your brain's going
Speaker 3: to show.
Speaker 5: Yes. Yes, your brain braining is the perfect thing to say. Yes.
Speaker 3: Apologies for andy blasphemy we may have committed. We were
Speaker 3: more just talking about, you know, what our where our
Speaker 3: brains take us. But for someone if there is someone
Speaker 3: who's currently struggling with this scrupulosity or religious anxiety or
Speaker 3: moral OCD, like what would you would you have any
Speaker 3: advice for them?
Speaker 5: Maggie, Oh boy, that's a that's my my favorite question.
Speaker 5: There were different phases to my recovery from scrupulosity. The
Speaker 5: first phase was within Christianity itself, so anybody suffering within Christianity.
Speaker 5: What I did that was so helpful for me is
Speaker 5: to replace my image of a scary, terrifying God that
Speaker 5: seemed likely to send me to hell with that of
Speaker 5: a warm, compassionate image and I really worked to construct that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I listened to songs I listened to like
Speaker 5: the Indigo Girls Strange Fire. That's the first line, I
Speaker 5: come to you with an offering of love. I come
Speaker 5: to you with a strange fire of love. It was
Speaker 5: written as a love song from God to his children.
Speaker 5: And so I thought of that. I pictured women as God.
Speaker 5: I made artwork that would evoke to me a compassionate, warm, pink, rosy,
Speaker 5: enveloping image. Like I treated it like an art project,
Speaker 5: so that I had a counter image. So anytime I
Speaker 5: was worried, you know, I was like I felt guilty.
Speaker 5: I had an image that I had curated that would
Speaker 5: arise when I had the fear that did not replace
Speaker 5: the horrible image, but stood side by side and within Christianity.
Speaker 5: That was the best thing I did for myself exiting Christianity.
Speaker 5: The best thing that I did for myself was read
Speaker 5: Joseph Campbell and realize how all of the different religions
Speaker 5: are connected and how these images are symbols. And I
Speaker 5: really came to understand how the Bible came to be created,
Speaker 5: how it's been used as a weapon of fear, and
Speaker 5: extricating myself completely from the literal thinking. Those were the
Speaker 5: two things that I did. Oh and meditate, Dear God,
Speaker 5: meditate that I don't know what would have happen and
Speaker 5: to my life if I didn't have a very regular
Speaker 5: meditation practice where I can continually come back to center
Speaker 5: and see what my mind is doing and then go
Speaker 5: all right, here we are here, we are doing its thing.
Speaker 5: Here we are thought.
Speaker 6: Oh, yeah, hello thought, goodbye thought.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean it's it's the hardest thing in the
Speaker 5: world to do, and I still struggle with repetitious thoughts,
Speaker 5: intrusive thoughts, but that's how I deal with it. That
Speaker 5: was a long answer.
Speaker 6: No, it's a great answer.
Speaker 3: I love having a distinction between within Christianity and extiting
Speaker 3: Christianity because that's obviously the approach will had to be
Speaker 3: very different and the treatment would be very different depending
Speaker 3: on what someone's belief system is. And we always do
Speaker 3: recommend mental health professionals who are specialized in what you
Speaker 3: are experiencing.
Speaker 6: I went to.
Speaker 3: Before I saw OCD therapy and God listeners. So sorry
Speaker 3: we talk about this so much, but before I saw
Speaker 3: someone who was specialized, I went to just the general
Speaker 3: therapist to kind of, you know, she just had anxiety
Speaker 3: listed as like one of her specialties. And she was
Speaker 3: great for what she was. You know, she was great
Speaker 3: for certain things. I don't want to trash her. She
Speaker 3: was a very good therapist, but she didn't necessarily know
Speaker 3: about this stuff. She told me that meditation could be helpful.
Speaker 3: I was having like kind of NonStop panic about about
Speaker 3: the idea of losing my mind, and she told me
Speaker 3: meditation could be helpful. And I was like, I'm trying
Speaker 3: meditation and it's not working. And she was like, well,
Speaker 3: you can't just start now, you have to have it ongoing.
Speaker 3: And then my obsessive brain was like, oh, because I
Speaker 3: didn't start meditating earlier, the meditation is not going to
Speaker 3: work for me. And so now every time I meditate,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be you.
Speaker 6: Know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I would meditate and then I'd be like, how
Speaker 3: do I feel now? How do I feel now? Did
Speaker 3: the meditation get rid of it? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 6: I'll just find something, It'll just find something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: But I do agree. Mindfulness.
Speaker 3: Mindfulness is a big part of the like sort of
Speaker 3: gold standard treatment for scrupulosity and OCD. Now, like being
Speaker 3: able to notice your thought and see it for what
Speaker 3: it is instead of identifying with it so strongly. It's
Speaker 3: it's yeah, it's just it's a skill we should all have,
Speaker 3: It's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Well it sounds like you're free from
Speaker 2: this belief system or do you still have lingering.
Speaker 4: Fears?
Speaker 5: Lingering but very wispy, Yeah, very wispy.
Speaker 3: Tell us where people can find your book and or
Speaker 3: are you on social media?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yes, so my website is maggiowauthor dot com. Books
Speaker 5: on Amazon anyway where they sell books.
Speaker 6: Awesome, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, Maggie, thank you so much for getting unstuck
Speaker 4: from under your gate and us and writing such an
Speaker 4: amazing book.
Speaker 3: Indeed, and speaking of the book, there is an ending
Speaker 3: to the book that is the reason it's called sin
Speaker 3: Bravely that we didn't actually get to talk about.
Speaker 4: Yes, very strong third act ending.
Speaker 2: She discovers through her psychiatrist, a philosopher who said something about, uh, like,
Speaker 2: if you're every human's gonna sin, so sin bravely, just
Speaker 2: be bold, be bold about shit, be bold about shit.
Speaker 3: Well, and in her case, like she was so terrified
Speaker 3: of sinning because of how much she wanted not to.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the most interesting things
Speaker 3: about OCD to me, is like it latches onto the
Speaker 3: thing that you want or don't want the most, so
Speaker 3: it's like whatever you value. So in her case, it
Speaker 3: just was a demonstration of how much she valued being
Speaker 3: righteous that she was so afraid of sinning. So for
Speaker 3: her to sin was like in defiance of like it
Speaker 3: was it's a really brave thing to do because she
Speaker 3: values being righteous so much exactly.
Speaker 4: So third act pinnacle of this book, which everybody should
Speaker 4: read for themselves. But I won't give away too much,
Speaker 4: but I will just tell you she ends up actually
Speaker 4: going at the end of her kind of summer and
Speaker 4: this institution to an amateur stripping night and doing a
Speaker 4: little strip tease.
Speaker 6: She lets it all loose, I mean just let at
Speaker 6: all loose.
Speaker 4: But she dances, yeah, and she and she takes all
Speaker 4: some clothes.
Speaker 3: And this is, you know, an exposure for her, and
Speaker 3: this is a way to be brave and to kind
Speaker 3: of defy her own obsessive brain. And I think it's
Speaker 3: such a cool, like interesting resolution to this kind of
Speaker 3: obsession about sin.
Speaker 4: I am obsessed with it. I loved it.
Speaker 2: Too, So yeah, read the book for the whole experience.
Speaker 2: But uh, you know you walk away from a feeling,
Speaker 2: feeling a nuisance of freedom. I did anyway, so hell yeah,
Speaker 2: can't say enough good about it.
Speaker 3: The book is called Sin Bravely, a Memoir of Spiritual
Speaker 3: Disobedience by Maggie Brow.
Speaker 2: Go check it out, Yes, please and go check us
Speaker 2: out on Apple and radous five stars.
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