This Is My Last Post
Okay, that’s a bit dramatic… It’s the end of Marathon To Freedom but exciting things to come…
You can listen to the letter above.
Possible trigger warning.
Part 1/2
Right, so, I’ve been giving this much thought and sitting with it in silence and I’m going to end Marathon to Freedom. It’s getting ditched!
When I first started down the road of coaching and NLP training, it was with a mind to help those a few steps behind me in emerging out of High Control Religion and to delve deeper into somatic healing or trauma informed coaching - which would be absolutely necessary, I believe. A year into my studies with The Coaching Academy, I realised this path wasn’t for me.
Walking backwards against a gale can bring momentary relief but ultimately it is only by turning and embracing the wind that we’re going to move forward.
I know that for me personally, that particular route would have been to continually be walking backwards.
In a way, however, I feel that’s what I’m doing here with Marathon To Freedom. To mix my metaphors, I’m driving whilst constantly looking in the rear view mirror.
That's why I left ex-member support groups—it felt heavy. By that alone, I know it’s time to let go of this part of my Substack, even though I thought it would continue longer.
It’s time to embrace a new direction.
The Exhausting Journey of Healing
The CPTSD and levels of reconstruction as a human, especially a female, on coming out of a fundamentalist style faith is immense. Only I can know how arduous these past few years have been. The inner work has felt like a full-time job at times and if I’m honest, I feel tired. It’s as
says:“Seekers who deconstruct religious beliefs also deconstruct their family relationships, generational traumas, attachment styles--and a series of memories that on the surface, might feel beloved.”
And I’d argue that delving into the deep structure of our unconscious mind goes even deeper than that. For example, we come to understand our role in the Drama Triangle, or when we’re projecting, and reacting from some frozen part of our childhood self.
In the Drama Triangle we are all playing out the following roles and we will frequently oscillate between the three positions:
Victim - feels helpless and oppressed
Persecutor - blames and criticizes
Rescuer - intervenes, appeases and takes control
In their insightful book on the Drama Triangle, Barry and Janae Weinhold explore how religious programming amplifies these roles. (*If you’d like to read an excerpt from their book you can do so at the end of this letter.)
I depended on the approval of men, the elders, and by jumping through the hoops of the belief system throughout my life in the hope of being seen as worthy, I, unconsciously, created a False Self that was acceptable to the organization, fostering co-dependency on the religion and avoiding personal responsibility.
This is a sure formula for victimhood, complete powerlessness. Once we’ve given away our power to create our authentic Self, my goodness, it’s hard to claim it back.
You might see why my body developed an illness that also rendered me powerless and listless in the form of Narcolepsy.
It’s like the age old story of a captured majestic elephant. How is it that such a huge and powerful animal can be submissive and obedient merely by a lightweight rope tied to a little stake in the ground when he could so easily break free? Because as a baby, the elephant was tied to something weightier, like concrete, that he could not budge or break free from, no matter how many times he tried.
Like that baby elephant, eventually, your spirit breaks and you relinquish all power, and this all takes place unconsciously.
Deconstruction and Reconstruction
I’ve learned to see every trigger - every time I sense my nervous system feeling ramped up - through the eyes of curiosity. It’s not always easy but it offers opportunity to loosen and unravel more knots and to understand why my body might return to fight, flight or freeze mode by something seemingly innocuous or unrelated.
“I have come to believe that humans beings are all born with an authentic self as well a desire for love, fairness, truth and meaning. It is something that no group can program out of a person and therefore there is always hope for real healing.” -Steven Hassan - Combatting Cult Mind Control
You see, it turns out you can deconstruct a lifetime of indoctrination relatively quickly. All as it takes is the courage to tackle one question, one doctrine, and when you realise the lies and half truths of one doctrine one wonders what else might be a falsehood? And what else? One by one, I realised it was all lies, all a means to control. I read the searingly honest yet loving book written by a former Governing Body member of the religion - Raymond Franz. I devoured the website devoted to aiding those in the process of deconstructing the religion I’d been in - JWfacts.com
Deconstruction is a theory that critiques and undermines traditional beliefs, structures, and systems in order to expose their inherent contradictions and inconsistencies. Jim Palmer
(This describes what is occurring not just in High Control Religions but many powerful structures across the planet right now - it’s a global phenomenon as many question everything they’ve ever been told about the world.)
What is a whole lot harder and requires the true grit is the building of one’s self-trust, self-worth, identity and intuition.
I remember saying to Rodney Allgood - founder of a facebook group called Empowered Minds, for ex-members of the organisation - how fascinating it is to me that ex-members can be so wildly suspicious of everyone and yet, at the same, time be so naive, so trusting.
Quick as a flash he came back with: It’s because the intuition isn’t calibrated right.
He nailed it in seven words.
All too often if we’ve been controlled in every way, we’ve lost the ability to tap into our own knowing, our own intuition.
Add to that the fact that everything outside of the faith was Satan’s world: dangerous, duplicitous, and devious.
This can leave a person vulnerable to further abuse. It can see someone merely flip-flop from one set of beliefs to another set. It can cause a clinging on to life rafts in the form of co-dependent relationships or, the putting on a pedestal those who are now activists or leaders of other belief systems - perhaps hanging onto their every word and opinion. The moment we start to idealise or idolise someone we’ve lost our freedom.
From The Hilarious to The Horror
(This section I’ve included mainly for anyone still in the faith who peeks in here and is questioning but too afraid to delve deeper. Otherwise you might continue to the next subheading.)
For quite some weeks now I’ve been receiving cosmic winks and nudges to speak my truth.
I’ve taken this to mean I must tell all the details of my former faith - from the hilarious to the horror and to continue with MTF. The hilarious being things like men now being given permission to grow beards if they choose for the first time in many decades. Grown-up men are now delighted they have permission to grow a beard but for years it was so deeply frowned upon that it was impossible to ‘progress’ within the faith, which saw you labeled as rebellious.
Or, another example being had I been the “rebellious” type and decided I’d wanted to go to University, my father would’ve been removed from his privileges and responsibilities as an elder within the faith. Thus ensuring the whole family was shamed, not just myself, such was the strenuous exhortation to not be enticed into higher learning or education.
And then to the horror - like the antediluvian shunning rule - inducing deep shame and isolation, I could write a whole piece on that alone. Or the shocking treatment of child abuse and spousal abuse survivors within the faith and the zero desire to implement real change for the protection of children.
“Abusers hide in places where you trust too much, where words like “truth” are in use and claimed about yourself (the belief system) and that makes the churches particularly dangerous places.” - Giles Fraser, Anglican Priest
[All the more so in my former faith which claims to have the Absolute Truth. The religion is even referred to as The Truth. I would now be described as: Suzy has left The Truth.]
Your average grass roots member of my former faith would have no clue about the IICSA (Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse) in Religious Settings in the UK and a similar inquiry in Australia back in 2015. It’s possible to watch the video footage of both inquiries on Government websites and yet even to do that was viewed as somehow apostate (the worst possible label in my former faith).
I remember an elder saying to me “We choose not to watch such things and to focus on verses such Isaiah 65:27.” This verse speaks of the former things not being remembered. Or, in other words, if someone has been abused, the new world, post Armageddon, will erase it.
This is what I wrote, in part, in my letter of disassociation in 2020:
“I find that level of either pride, head-burying, or just down right lack of care and compassion (I can’t fathom which) mind blowing. It takes my breath away. Such a lazy minded form of Christianity! How is it that elders would not be interested in how the organisation they are 100% affiliated with - the same entity they live and would die for - protects children from predators? …
It matters that things change and that the elders are given training - preferably from sources outside of the organisation on helping abuse survivors. I’d wager my life that no such training will ever take place because to do so would admit fault, weakness and vulnerability in the organisation and the Governing Body will simply not do that. A stark reminder being the Prime Minister of Australia pleading with Jehovah’s Witnesses to join the redress system and compensate child abuse survivors…
We are conditioned to believe everything is flush and rosy in the garden and that even to view government questioning is somehow apostate, dangerous, unhealthy and unnecessary…”
And then there was Geoffrey Jackson a Governing Body member admitting under oath in an Australian court of Law that it would be “presumptuous” to say that JW’s are God’s official channel via “The Faithful and Discreet Slave” (or in other words, those taking the lead, the governing body) this essentially being the keystone teaching of the faith and why such unquestioning, and blind loyalty continues, even when it comes to abuse of power and dereliction of duty in things like child protection and domestic abuse survivors.
To say nothing of the complete lack of inclusivity for the LGBTQ+ community. To be gay would risk being shunned, unless you remain celibate.
(A truly insightful post on Instagram here from Matías De Stafano on why even the word Pride is still rooted in shame following so many generations of discrimination and trauma and how we really want to be celebrating so much more than that.)
What is My Truth?
I have pages and pages of writings like above but increasingly, my sense is that my truth isn’t about putting all of that out there. I want to feed the energies I want to see more of in the world. That is my truth.
If I’m being very honest I know there is a part of me that wanted to continue writing about the trek out of High Control Religion because I wanted new friendships made to grasp the enormity of what I’ve walked through.
But it has been my experience over and over again that no one else can give me love, understanding or validation until I first give it to myself.
At some point, I’ve got to put down the regret, the anger and pain. So why not now? Here? Only I will ever know what my journey has been. Just as only you can know the challenges you’ve traversed.
I remember a coach asking me last year, “Suzy, do you know what you’ve been through in life?”
“I’m not quite sure I know what you mean.” I replied.
She said, “When you come to fully grasp your own journey, you won’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of you.”
Sat listening to birdsong at my favourite time of the day - golden hour - one evening this week I felt one of those moments in my body when you just know something has shifted. I didn’t feel self pity as much as deep self compassion. I recalled the words of the coach and realised, with no little amount of relief, I don’t need to share any of this any more.
I was third generation, arguably fourth, on my dad’s side and I was fully in that faith/organisation until I was 41 years of age. I know I’ve felt the need to time stamp in this way because I’ve ached for people to know how far the roots go down. I’ve yearned for people to know how hard it is to wake up from such deep conditioning - especially if born in - and the complexities of starting over in ways many can’t begin to imagine. All at the same time as coming to terms with losing your former community and even family. The deep frustration at having been duped for so long; the feeling of deep betrayal; the frequently being consumed with grief for a life seemingly lost/sacrificed.
When people speak to me about being in mid-life, I want to put my hands over my ears and scream-sing: ‘LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA’, so I can’t hear them. Mid-life?! Ha! I’ve only recently experienced what felt like my coming of age!
It’s not so much that I’m sticking my head in the sand - it’s more that I refuse to be labeled and put in any kind of box. I, we, are multi-faceted, multi-layered, complex beings. And goodness knows, I was in a pigeon-holed box for so long.
Why Didn’t You Just Leave?
I read a review recently in The Guardian - I think - for an ex-member’s newly released book. The journalist wrote something like, “More than anything I felt impatient at why she didn’t just leave the cult.”
Ahh, what shocking lack of comprehension for the human psyche. What an abject ignorance for the way our values and beliefs are more or less fully formed by the time we’re five.
Eric Berne, who wrote ‘The Games People Play’, suggested that, by the age of 4 or 5, the life script was written. By 7 it was polished and had the essential characters. By 12 years old it was further polished and was beginning to be lived out. So if you’re born in, several generations in, you can imagine how challenging it might be to Wake Up.
To say nothing of the insidious way such belief systems infiltrate the mind, using fear, shame, guilt. There’s a reason Steven Hassan helps gauge high control groups with the acronym BITE.
Behaviour control
Information control
Thought control
Emotional manipulation.
I remember putting out an open question in The Coaching Academy’s Facebook group when grappling with decisions about my way forward and one coach replied: “Make sure the client is safe, not retraumatised and as a precaution don't go where you don't belong.”
Do you see the problem? For most people, a cult is something going on in some sort of off grid community. Something set apart from the masses, hidden away.
I wasn’t without books, internet connection or technology. I looked like anyone of my neighbours. I simply felt too much fear to question. That level of fear runs deep. Everything is seen as a possible threat to one’s survival at Armageddon - which is any day now.
You’re taught to examine everything, to study the bible meticulously and yet to discard everything - unless it’s of the faith’s publications. Developing any kind of critical thinking skills or your own thinking ability comes to be seen as prideful, haughty or lacking humility.
Even though, I wasn’t in Scientology, I remember finding the following quotes from Leah Remini in an interview with Louis Theroux really soothing.
“People think that getting into a cult like Scientology you’re a weak minded loser. But it’s just the opposite. You’re someone who is searching for a better life for yourself, a better planet, a mission, you want to do good for the world, you want to do good for yourself and for your family...”
Louis Theroux interrupted and said: “Yeah absolutely - people who want a mission, who are willing to self-sacrifice and they’re being offered a code of conduct: ‘Here’s a step by step process in which we will make the world a better place, in which we will eliminate war, crime, insanity and all the rest of it.’”
What is fascinating to me is that in an interview with FKA Twigs, of the same series, speaking about an abusive relationship she’d been in, FKA Twigs addresses that horrendous question that abused people will often be asked: Why didn’t you just leave/Why didn’t you ask for help? She says:
“It’s hard to understand what’s going on psychologically when you’re being controlled and coerced by an abuser because it happens very slowly. So if I’m thinking in this relationship that I’m the worst person ever, that I’m disgusting, that everything I do is wrong... I just didn’t know who I was, I was hollow. [Which is exactly how I always felt.]
That whole “Why didn’t you just leave” conversation is something I really want to tackle. People often ask the victim, the survivor “Why didn’t you leave?” Instead of asking the abuser, “Why are you holding somebody hostage through abusive behaviour?” It’s a fair question to ask, why didn’t you leave, but it puts a lot on me, it puts a lot on victims and survivors…One answer I’ve given is because it genuinely felt impossible… ”
I remember a friend who had been in a terribly abusive marriage wondering how it was that I seemed to understand the complexities of abuse so much. Maybe this why. Maybe it’s because on some level I knew I’d been gaslighted my whole life.
In a therapy session in January of 2021, the gentle soul giving counselling said: “All as I can see when I picture you is you stood in the midst of a bomb zone, there’s only destruction and decimation around you and yet, somehow, you are still standing.”
I couldn’t have found a better analogy but I definitely didn’t want to keep dwelling amidst rubble and carnage and yet to some degree, I know I have. It’s been an incredibly challenging thing to just let all go. To let the injustice, the ludicrousness of it all, just pfft, go.
Free
In those early days of leaving I felt a freeness as I began to sense a whole world open up to me in ways it simply hadn’t been before.
There had been so many things that didn’t make sense, so much injustice, so much policing - all done in the guise of love. The guilt I’ve felt ever since I can remember had been a lot to bear.
I think for the uber conscientious, highly sensitive person the life I lived was always going to be littered with very real mental health challenges. Why?
Because with the level of indoctrination I’d work at putting into myself each and every single day the guilt could, would, did, only ever intensify. It could never be assuaged. It would be like drinking salt water - the more I studied the Bible the more I’d need to do to convince myself that God loved me and that I wasn’t a Terrible Person.
It was early January 2021 and I wrote the following in an ex-members group:
“Today I was cycling along the coastal path near my flat, I had music blasting in my ears, the sun was setting and it was so bright, Baltic and beautiful. My fingers and nose felt iced and suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a brief snow flurry. Dog walkers and those out for some fresh air, stood looking to the sky with big smiles. The whole scene was surreal. I stuck out my tongue to catch the icey flakes and I felt an incandescent joy in my heart that I’m not sure I’ve ever quite felt. I felt salty tears at the corner of my mouth - tears of pure happiness for being alive and for feeling free of so many, many, many man-made shackles.
“I know well what a difficult and, at times, even harrowing road it is …
to realize deeply held and cherished beliefs are nothing more than lies and to almost overnight lose a hope that had perhaps literally kept you standing upright. And yet, even despite all of that, to be mentally free is something I hold dear. I felt a deep serenity.
Today was a good day and I’ll hold onto that with both hands please.”
In the early days out, even with all of the pain and loss, I felt many such moments of a lightness and joy. I allowed them seep into my being. I journaled about them. I wrote lists of freedoms. I wrote lists of what brings me joy. And lists of things to be grateful for.
In any journey, or life transition, by noting the things that bring us joy, we start to invite more and more of that in. Those moments start to bring clarity, no matter how seemingly fragmented as we take our first, wobbly steps into the unknown.
I feel like this post is a bit all over the place. It’s hard to succinctly summarise in a tidy, little bow what I had planned to write about for many months, but that’s the wonderful thing about taking messy action—it brings clarity about what we actually want to be doing - we fail forwards.
Part 2 of this post will give a glimpse of what I’m wanting to create (and will be a shorter read, promise!) because thankfully, through my coaching, NLP and meditation journey, I know that we can re-write the script any time we choose.
It’s time to truly set myself free.
Thank you for being here,
With so much love,
Suzy ✨
*An excerpt from How to Break Free of the Drama Triangle and Victim Consciousness - parenthesised bits are mine:
“The cornerstone of Christianity is the belief that if you confess your sins and are forgive by the church leaders (or elders), you will have eternal life (survive Armageddon). This belief takes the Persecutor/Victim bond to the next level. When we add the devine Rescuer to the mix, the Drama Triangle is set. This trap is known as the Saviour Complex…
You cannot help but sin because it is your very nature. Since you have no control over your sinful behaviour, you can only be victimised by it.
It is a religious Persecutors’ job to remind you of how you have sinned. They are in charge of deciding whether you have jumped through the hoops they’ve set for you and whether you are worthy of being saved (surviving Armageddon).
Jesus Christ died for our sins. He and the church leaders (Governing Body), or Rescuers, as his representatives, can save you from eternal damnation (or dying at Armageddon).”
So powerful Suzy. Perhaps finishing the marathon this year is a little symbolic of finishing your marathon to escape. I'm looking forward to reading part 2 and I hope that this feels like a release and a relief for you?
An incredible read Suzy. You have so much knowledge I’m in awe!
I look forward to whatever you decide to write next xxx