In this episode of Beyond the Surface, we hear Megan’s powerful story of resilience and transformation as she navigates life after growing up in a fundamental, high-control evangelical environment. From the pressures of purity culture to the emotional toll of fear-based faith, Megan shares how she transitioned from conventional therapy to religious harm recovery. Through candid reflections on toxic relationships, faith-driven guilt, and post-traumatic growth, Megan’s journey highlights the importance of community, self-exploration, and reclaiming one’s identity after religious trauma.

Who Is Megan?

Megan is a Licensed Psychotherapist and Religious Harm Recovery Coach who was indoctrinated into fundamentalist evangelical christianity at an early age. Her work in the mental health field eventually helped her begin to make sense of her complicated family history and the way the patriarchal religious groups of her childhood supported harmful, authoritarian systems of control. She now draws from both her personal experience and professional expertise to help others recover from religious harm and reclaim their authentic selves.

Connect with Us

• You can find more about Megan's work on her website - https://meganvonfricken.com
• You can also connect on Instagram or Facebook
• To join Megan's group for religious harm recovery click here.

• To connect with Sam on Instagram - @anchoredcounsellingservices
• Want to contact with Sam about the podcast or therapy? Use this contact form.

00:18 - Sam (Host)

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today. I recognise the deep connection that First Nations people have to this land, their enduring culture and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country. This land was never ceded and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Hey there and welcome to Beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control or cult communities and are deconstructing their faith. I'm your host, sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives. Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced and the insights they've gained. Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place.

01:36

This is Beyond the Surface. Welcome, megan. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Welcome, megan. Thanks for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so excited about this episode because I love your Instagram. It is so good, thank you. And I've just noticed, as of today, when we're recording it, you've just rechanged your name, you've rebranded.

02:08 - Megan (Guest)

Yes, yes, so I found myself. So it's Religious Harm Recovery now, and it used to be reclaimingselftherapy. And when I started last summer posting on Instagram, I had no idea what to call myself. You know you, you just try out different names and doing religious trauma something. Just, there were so many accounts like that. So as I started telling people about my work and working with clients, religious harm recovery kept coming up over and over again. So I just finally switched the Instagram to that handle and I'm owning it. I'm loving it. So far.

02:44 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I love it. I think also in my experience it takes a really long time for people to be able to use the word trauma also. So I find using the term religious harm, I find a lot of people would just gravitate that to, you know, to that language a lot more, because trauma comes with a bit of weight to it and a lot of people I find don't love using that terminology and are even resistant to using it to start with.

03:13 - Megan (Guest)

So I was resistant. Yes, Because I didn't think that it. I met the criteria. I'm a therapist, I know what the actual like DSM criteria is and I just didn't think that that applied to me. I know it does. Now you have the complex and developmental trauma. But if I had been researching for help with what I was dealing with a number of years ago, I wouldn't have been Googling religious trauma.

03:41 - Sam (Host)

That wouldn't have been part of it. Yeah, yeah, I remember arguing for months and months with my own therapist, as a therapist, going, it's not trauma, like it's not trauma. I know what trauma is. I work with trauma. And then like I think it was like 12 or you know 13 months later I'm like, okay, maybe it's a little bit of trauma. It's such a journey. Even for us as therapists it's a journey. So, yeah, so thank you for joining me Now. Obviously, we both work in this space, but we also both have stories in this space. So where does your story start?

04:30 - Megan (Guest)

So my story begins with indoctrination Fun, Fun. And when I say indoctrination I am talking about that persistent, almost mind control approach that high control religions use to bring people into their way of thinking and being and existing. So you have all aspects of your life controlled your emotions, your thinking, your behavior, your emotions, your thinking, your behavior. So my parents gravitated towards a very tiny fundamentalist evangelical church when I was probably three, maybe four, very young. Neither one of them were super religious growing up, but my grandparents found this little tiny church as a way, I think, of kind of addressing some major family traumas that were going on for them. And so when my parents moved back into the area where my grandparents were living, they began going to that church. Parents were living, they began going to that church. So that is where my story begins, with this tiny little church in the middle of nowhere. Very fundamentalist and very, you know, black and white thinking. This is how you do it. Everyone else is wrong.

05:59 - Sam (Host)

So what was it like for little Megan growing up in that environment?

06:04 - Megan (Guest)

Well, I think, like most children, you don't realize how toxic it is until you look back through an adult lens. So I grew up going. In the US we have something called Awana, which is do you have that in Australia?

06:22 - Sam (Host)

No, but I know, I know. Heard of it it's got a lot to be responsible for from from my point of view.

06:29 - Megan (Guest)

Yeah, yes, yes, so I started in Iwana when I was just a sparky, so that would be kindergarten age and it stands. It's an acronym that stands for approved workmanship. Are not ashamed, I believe, and it's all about doing the workbooks and memorizing Bible verses and learning. You know their beliefs from a very young age. It's just drilled into you. And that was my social outlet for my elementary school years, because I was also homeschooled so I didn't really have social connections that a lot of kids got from going to school. I just had my siblings and we were homeschooled with a faith-based curriculum that taught creationism not evolution. We had bible classes as part of our curriculum, all of that. So it was a very isolated experience. And then my social outlets were things like Awana and Sunday school and things like that.

07:36 - Sam (Host)

So still very faith-based social outlets.

07:41 - Megan (Guest)

Everything. I mean my parents, especially my mom, was very committed to separating us from the world, which she, you know, believed I herself was dangerous, and then instill that fear in us as well, yeah, very isolated.

07:58 - Sam (Host)

yeah, and I think a lot of people don't necessarily automatically use the term high control when it comes to churches, right, so in what other ways was I mean? Obviously your education system and your socials were controlled in that space, but what other ways did that look like a high control space?

08:24 - Megan (Guest)

So and when I look back I always I'm I'm still to this day trying to understand how much was my family and how much was the religion pushing in. It was so interwoven in my experience. But within my home we did not have access to media outside of Christian sources. So my parents turned off the TV when I was probably about eight years old. It was very traumatic because we had these shows that we watched. I mean, I use the word trauma very loosely in this context. Of course it was not actually trauma trauma I can actually say that about this one um. But we came home, the tv was shut off because they didn't want us to be exposed to these worldly um influences, watching other children on tv do things that they didn't approve of, even though it was very gpg kinds of stuff. Still, that was too too much of the world to be watching that. So then we only watched at that point it was vhs, so movies that were carefully curated by my parents, who watched a lot of really old films like from the 60s or 50s, like black and white stuff. So that was really controlled. We didn't read books that didn't have Christian authors. All of the radio was Christian programming, so we didn't listen to the secular radio unless it was the oldies station. There's a theme here with older was better, even though we know that older is also not better. So that was part of it as well, that these old songs were okay, old movies were okay, but nothing that was present day was really okay, so that was controlled.

10:26

What I wore was very regulated, of course. I grew up in purity culture, so modesty was always top of mind. Skirts had to be down to my knee at least. You had to have shorts a certain length. No spaghetti straps it was. Yeah, the apparel was very rigidly controlled as well. How we spoke was controlled, you know. No cursing, no taking the Lord's name in vain. Our thoughts were controlled, like don't think of certain types of, like jealousy or lustful thoughts, or I'm kind of drawing a blank on all the rules. But you probably are familiar with this line of thinking, like all the things you're not supposed to dwell on or think about, only happy thoughts here, right, yeah, and all of the rules that don't do this as opposed to do this.

11:20 - Sam (Host)

It's all of the stuff you're not allowed to do as opposed to you know the freedom to do these things, because you know freedom is freedom is scary, freedom allows for questions, freedom allows for curiosity and, yeah, that's that's dangerous territory.

11:41 - Megan (Guest)

Well and the other. I think the final thing that was really controlled was my social world. So I talked about being homeschooled. But you know, even beyond that, you know, making friends with people outside of our faith group was very dangerous because they could lead us astray.

12:00 - Sam (Host)

So who we associated with beyond, witnessing or converting them, was very rigidly controlled as well risky and dangerous but in the same token you can talk to them if you are trying to convert them. Just leads to that, you know, savior of the world sort of mentality, which is a lot of pressure for little people to have on their shoulders.

12:40 - Megan (Guest)

Oh, I felt that pressure intensely. The churches I went to, so evangelism was, of course, the priority being in evangelical Christianity. But the missionaries of our churches were viewed as celebrities, so they would come home on furlough from the mission field and share their stories and they would do special offerings for them. And like meeting them was such a big deal because we'd be hearing about them and the work they were doing for months and the idea was that there was no higher calling than to leave your family and your home, like your country of origin, to go off somewhere else and begin winning souls for the Lord and that was extremely anxiety provoking for me, because I did not like to witness, I did not like to evangelize and I was pretty bad at it.

13:34

So I wanted to figure out okay, how can I do this thing that we're supposed to be doing without going to another country and talking to strangers about God, because that seems horrifying? Yeah, absolutely. That's why I became a social worker.

13:51 - Sam (Host)

So here we are yeah, I, um, I talk about. There's a part of my story where I was in Fiji, which is a, a Christian nation, for starters, a coloured nation, but we, as you know, young white people wanted to go and tell them about Jesus, and there is just so, so many like gross layers is the only term that I can think of to witnessing, I mean, and there's a lot of like racial layering as well, in terms of going into particularly colored nations, um, as white people thinking that we know better somehow. Um, that, um, yeah, but missionary work is is put on a pedestal for sure, um, yeah, because, I mean, it's the equivalent, essentially, of, like, you know, when Jesus asked his disciples to leave everything and follow him. Right, it's like the ultimate example that you are doing the Lord's work.

14:58

So, um, you talked about the control of thoughts and we were talking a little bit before, uh, recording that swearing and and things like that is still something that is. It is not something that's easy to do or is able to do at all, um, and so I think you know, people forget the long-lasting impact of of this sort of thing. Right, um, I, you, you know we'll say, oh my God, but there's still like a little part of me that goes oh, no, like, oh, particularly if I say it without realizing oh, and then I catch myself afterwards. Are there moments where that happens for you?

15:42 - Megan (Guest)

Oh, it just happened today. Yes, it happens all the time, yes, and I want to be able to say oh my God, but that was the worst, most heinous thing that you could do as a believer to take the Lord's name in vain. And so I still have these really weird things. I say, like you know, I'll be like oh goodness, or oh my gosh, or I mean those. That's not really that weird, but I'm drawing a blank on some of the weird things I do say instead.

16:16 - Sam (Host)

But I think a lot of Christians have a workaround terminology to say instead of the no-no words or phrases right yeah, absolutely, I'm trying to think as well, but I think I'm drawing a blank, because I haven't used them for a really long time like oh sugar, oh fudge bucket, oh like those kinds of things.

16:37

Yeah, I had a friend who would say um, like fire truck, instead of saying fuck, essentially, and like I'm like, I like short, like in my, my young teenage brain goes like, if you thought the swear word but said fire truck instead. Like isn't God still going to know? Like, like, just like, whether you say it out loud or not, like if God is all knowing, then like he's going to know anyway.

17:13 - Megan (Guest)

Like, but then it comes down to being an example, and that was the big. That was a big part of the control, too, is that you had to maintain this perfect facade of Christianity so that your life was a witness. Yeah, so, even if God knew what was going on behind the you know the, the weird phrase you chose to say what if somebody heard you? And now you're not being an example of Christian behavior?

17:44 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, absolutely. You're not being an example of christian behavior. Yeah, absolutely, and particularly if you were female, you were then not being very ladylike um which I. I hate that term more than anything else. Yeah, um, purity culture comes up in nearly all of these episodes in some way. Um, it has a lot to um, it has a lot of um. There's a lot to be responsible for. Um. What was purity culture like for you personally?

18:19 - Megan (Guest)

so this is also one of those things that's hard for me to unwind from my family of origin stuff, because I think a big part of the reason my mom in particular really clung to this religion. So I should back up my parents did separate and divorce when I was around 10 or 11. My dad even though he did take us to a Juana in and he was very involved I don't think I would, looking back, have called him a true believer. So I think he did go along to get along for quite a few years, but after they separated he just kind of went back to his pre-fundamentalist life, pre-marriage life and beliefs. He and I never really talked about that.

19:09

Unfortunately, there was a lot of parental alienation that occurred with the divorce and for people who don't know what that is, that's when one parent systematically turns the children against the other parent and I didn't realize, of course, as a child that that was happening. But a lot of what was used against him was his non-Christian beliefs. He was labeled abusive, he was labeled a non-believer and so because of the way we grew up, that was very fearful for me as a child. I had three brothers as well and different ages. They were affected differently. But so we were. We were turned against him and because I was a true believer myself, I mean I'd been indoctrinated. Since I could speak essentially, eventually, um I it was very hard for me to feel safe around him, um, because of the way the narrative was spun by my mom and my maternal grandparents.

20:14

So she had a lot of her own trauma. I don't know the extent of it, but she was always been extremely fearful of men and that isn't necessarily connected to religion for her, because she wasn't brought up in purity culture and indoctrinated in the same way I was. But I believe she saw the church's approach to sexuality as a very safe alternative to what she experienced culturally. So she fully bought into all of the purity culture standards modesty, not dating until I was older. She really liked the idea of the courtship model.

20:59

I of course read I Kissed Dating a Bye by Josh Harris, and there were a couple other ones that I read as well the Luties, eric and Leslie Lutie, I think, had written a book that talked a lot about purity culture standards. So I was very bought into that as well. You know abstinence only I wasn't to the extent where I'm not going to touch my partner before marriage, but I certainly wasn't going to have sex with my partner, so I could do certain things. I really pushed the boundaries, by the way, but felt tremendous shame and guilt, of course, because now I'm maybe not a fully chewed up piece of gum, but I'm a little.

21:50

My wrapper's a little messed up.

21:53 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, and you mentioned like that you were a true believer at this point. And so what was your personal relationship with God like through all of this?

22:10 - Megan (Guest)

I would say I had a very close relationship with God. I was a prayer journaler Weren't we all? Weren't? We all? Yes, and I'm grateful to this day because for some I know it can be actually too triggering to do any kind of journaling after being a prayer journaler. But for me the practice still holds, not to journal or prayer journal or journal and writing to God, but just kind of writing to myself or writing just in general. So thankfully I didn't lose that to myself, or writing just in general. So thankfully I didn't lose that. But it was a very close, connected relationship.

22:50

I was constantly seeking how can I serve, what is, how do I turn my life over to God? I didn't have any ambitions of anything I wanted for myself personally. I mean, I didn't even I wanted to get married because I was very love starved that's a phrase that I use a lot with my clients now that I find applies to myself because even though there was so much control, there wasn't a lot of connection and there wasn't attunement and there wasn't emotional awareness in my family. So I did seek that out through a romantic partner. So I wanted to be with a partner, but I didn't really see myself having children. I didn't see myself pursuing goals of any kind or traveling or doing the things a lot of people think about doing when they're in their teens and early 20s, like when they're thinking about how they want their lives to go.

23:52

I didn't have any of that. All I wanted was to serve God and because I wasn't going to be a missionary because that sounded horrifying, as I said before, I became a social worker. As I said before, I became a social worker, and that is how I was going to bring the light of Christ's love to the people who needed help the most. That's all I knew going into college that I wanted to do. So, yes, it was. It was a very, I would say. I had an enmeshed relationship with God.

24:25 - Sam (Host)

What a therapy term to throw in. I mean and I want to get to the irony of being a social worker but was your relationship with God based around love or based around fear?

24:46 - Megan (Guest)

It was actually. I haven't thought about it in that way before. I think I would say it was based around fear, because there was anxiety about letting God down yeah, I didn't. So it's one of the common themes. So it was a very shameful experience to be a single mother in these churches and because divorce was a sin, and, of course, I believe that's why she had to label him as abusive and all these things, because that was the loophole out, and I believe she really feels that he was. I don't know that he was or wasn't, I'm not ready to say he was, but I think that that is what he had to be depicted as in order to get that loophole out of the marriage.

25:40

In that setting Um, but I sort of lost my train of thought just there. So, based on fear or love and anxiety, yeah, so I think, um, oh, I know what I was going to say. So, growing up with a single mom, in those settings people think, oh, god can be your, your daddy, god can be your new father. Have you ever heard of people say, like, starting their prayers with daddy jesus or daddy god and like that always gave me ick yeah, it still does.

26:24

I mean it really should now. But even as a teenager when I believed, yeah, like this is really like um. So I never saw God as a paternal father, a loving figure, I think. That just wasn't really modeled for me, so I had no idea what that would look like anyway, and I didn't see him as a romantic partner. Have you heard of going on dates with Jesus?

26:47 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, this is my boyfriend. Jesus is my boyfriend, yeah, so Jesus is my boyfriend, daddy, jesus, all of these creepy things.

26:55 - Megan (Guest)

So that was not part of it for me, I think, cause my family structure was pretty authoritarian. My maternal grandfather is very authoritarian. I think it was seeing God as this ultimate authority that I didn't want to let down, I didn't want to displease, so it was more fear-based Also. So since I've been doing this work, I didn't realize this was actually a thing. But I hear a lot about heaven anxiety, where people say like I didn't really want to go to heaven. That sounded terrible to me, kind of creeped me out or sounded scary as a kid and I would have to agree Like I was not drawn to the evangelical picture of heaven at all. However, I was very fearful of the evangelical depiction of hell and burning forever and being tortured and weeping and gnashing of teeth and it was very graphic and didn't want to go there. So, yeah, it wasn't about heaven, it wasn't about love, it wasn't about any of that. It was about avoiding disappointing God and avoiding the fiery pits of hell.

28:04 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, and and I mean we see that even in secular spaces, in terms of like, negative reinforcement is much like, is like propels people much more um, because we just want to avoid the thing that we don't want um, as opposed to getting the thing that we do want um. So, yeah, I have an anxiety. I especially when um heaven was that this is what heaven is in terms of like, what we were trying to create, heaven on earth, and it's like, well, this is awful, like this is boring, like I don't want this. But, yeah, you're right, it's the, it's the fear of avoiding um, the very graphic um.

28:57

It's ironic that we let kids hear this graphic imagery of hell, um, but yet, like harry potter, is dangerous and you know, yeah, all of these, uh, and we don't let children watch horror movies, um, but you know the the violent and graphic depictions of hell is is somehow okay or the passion of the christ oh my god or the left the left behind movie and books like the left behind books really traumatized me.

29:35 - Megan (Guest)

I read those when I was about 13 and then I did have pretty significant rapture anxiety after that that was oh, that was tough yeah, the passion of the Christ movie, like I still.

29:49 - Sam (Host)

I reckon, if I focus, if I thought about it too long, it would, it's like see it in my memory. Um, it's um, it just is like really, really guilt reinforcing, um that um, you're the reason this is happening. Um, so, yeah, okay, um, the irony of you being a social worker, because mental health, I would imagine, was not necessarily something that would have been talked about and not talked about in a healthy capacity anyway. Yeah, so how did you land there?

30:39 - Megan (Guest)

health just didn't even really exist growing up, which was interesting in a way because my mom and dad did go to a Christian counselor as their marriage was kind of on its last legs and so I had that kind of model that they did that. But we were never put into counseling of any kind and I thought of mental health issues as those really like schizophrenia or those really intense depictions of mental health, but not something that you know. I didn't know what trauma was, of course, growing up or anything like that. So when I became a social worker it was not with the intent of becoming a therapist and in fact I didn't even have the phrase or the terminology social worker until I was in my freshman year of college and was told by a professor that that's what I wanted to do. So it was a very weird sequence of events. I knew that I wanted to have a profession where essentially I would work and this is just me from rural America, like thinking the cities are the dens of iniquity. So of course I saw myself working in a city with people who actually teen moms is. What really stood out to me is wanting to work with teen moms, and that's probably because I was conditioned to believe, like getting pregnant as a teenager was the worst thing that could happen to you.

32:11

And there was a song had you heard of the Christian group out of Eden. They were sort of like the Christian version of Destiny's Child. Yeah, so there was a song about a girl named Sarah Jane who got pregnant and she was out on the streets all alone and that just spoke to my heart as a 14, 13, 14 year old. I was like I want to help girls like little Sarah Jane. So that really steered my thinking about what I wanted to do, but I didn't know the term social work at that point. When I got to college, I went to a Christian college and very grateful for this experience, actually, because I ended up went to a Christian college and very grateful for this experience actually because I ended up going to a more progressive Christian college. My youth pastors were very alarmed. They wanted me to go to like a biblical Bible college, like very conservative and I didn't know much about doctrine, like I just thought that all Christian is the same, but they knew that all Christian wasn't the same.

33:16

And so they were alarmed that I was going to be exposed to more progressive Christian beliefs. But I went anyway. I just I had picked it and that's where I went. And you have those foundational introduction classes that are kind of like how to be a college student that everybody takes, and I ended up in a class with people who had all checked off. They wanted to do social work Like this was a big degree path at that school. That and education, youth ministry those were the big ones, but I had checked off undecided. So I just got placed in this group with all these people who knew what social work was and wanted to do it. And I sat down with an advisor later that semester and he was asking me what I wanted to do and I was telling him and he was like that's social work, that's social work, that's social work as my major. I absolutely loved it. It was so aligned with my values.

34:19

But then it became in conflict with my indoctrination, because social work is a pretty liberal profession and they believe in human rights, for example, yeah, and equality, for example, yeah and equality, for example, yeah. Whereas the churches I grew up in were very homophobic I mean looking back, of course they were also racist, sexist, anti-mental health, anti-equality it was just, I didn't know any of that. My equality, it was just, I didn't know any of that. I mean, I went. I was so isolated and just I had no real understanding of the issues in the world that when I got into this degree path, all of these things opened up to me. But that is what started to create so much cognitive dissonance about how I had been indoctrinated. And then I was in my 20s just trying to navigate, you know, being a Christian and holding on to faith while also being a social worker and holding on to humanity, and those two were really in conflict with each other.

35:28 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, what was it I'm picturing, like the image that's coming to mind, is you sort of standing and the foundation under you is just slowly cracking, and the cracks are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so what was that like? Because that sounds terrifying.

35:48 - Megan (Guest)

Yeah, well, I think I was really good at dissociating, yeah, so that was one of my coping skills.

35:55 - Sam (Host)

That's the answer to the prayer journal.

35:59 - Megan (Guest)

Right, yeah, so I was really good at shutting things down, because that's a skill you learn, is you just don't follow that path of inquiry too far, but one of the things okay. So I graduated and I worked for a year and I then decided to go back to grad school to be a therapist at that point and I chose play therapy because in my year of work, right outside of my undergrad, I worked in a nursing home. So I was working with older adults and that was very difficult for me because it wasn't. People were at the end of their lives and I saw myself helping to influence people earlier in their lives so that they could have a better life. And that goes back again to that Christian, probably indoctrination of you know, you gotta catch them young and steer them in the right way um, I haven't heard the phrase catch them young for so long yeah, so I you know, as I think I was only I graduated when I was 21.

37:14

So I was did a full year of working as a 21 year old, so at 22,. I enrolled in grad school, so by 24, I was a therapist, wow. Which is so crazy to me to think about.

37:28 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean, but I almost think that the crazier thing is that at 24, not that you were a therapist, but that at 24, you weren't married.

37:42 - Megan (Guest)

Okay, so this is yes, or were?

37:45 - Sam (Host)

you. I was not Right, I was not Because, like by 24, like you should be like married with at least one kid or at least one on the way, I mean like married barefoot and pregnant is kind of the thing.

38:00 - Megan (Guest)

I know.

38:00

So this is another when I look back on how my path differed from a lot of people I talk to, particularly women, not only from the religious background, but the cultural background of central Pennsylvania is very rural, very conservative, and so, even if you're not part of religion, people didn't really go to college.

38:23

People got married out of high school and started families right away. So I always knew I didn't want that and I always felt like I didn't belong in that town or that community want that and I always felt like I didn't belong in that town or that community. I didn't know why exactly, but I knew that I didn't fit that mold, not just because of religion In fact that wasn't even part of it but I felt culturally I didn't belong. And so I think again this is related to my parents divorcing when I was young, because I was raised by a single mom and there was a lot of trauma related to that and a lot of things that were done very poorly. So I'm not romanticizing that piece, but I think I saw it was not modeled for me to have a two-parent household it was modeled for me that I could just go off and be on my own.

39:16

I didn't want to be, because, again, I was love starved. But I also didn't prioritize having children, like that was never a priority, and I was also parentified. So I was parenting my young brothers growing up and I think having children probably just seemed really overwhelming and bad to me because of how we were raised and how it seemed that it was one of the hardest things that my mom had to go through, even though she chose to have four children. But here we are. So I was not married at 24, but I had had numerous very serious relationships and I always picked partners who. It wasn't a selection based on marriage material per se. It was more based on availability, like they are available to be in a relationship with me.

40:19

We don't, we're not aligned politically this, they're kind of a misogynist there this, whatever, but that was. I had no concept. I had no self-worth and no understanding of what I really wanted in a partner. I just knew I needed to be connected in that way. So now that you say 24, I was in a relationship from 22 to 24, or about 22 to 23 and a half, so it was about a year and a half long and this guy was also homeschooled. But he was very much a part of the culture of that area and his parents were openly racist, openly homophobic, like we put a nice gloss on it, in my family at least.

41:10

42:00

He actually broke up with me, which cause I wasn't God's best for him terminology that was actually used, and I'm so grateful that I was not God's best for him, because it would have been a nightmare.

42:12

Um but then I I met through him who did become my husband. So I started dating a friend from that group at 24. And we were long distance for three years. He was in the military, he moved out to Washington State, which is across the country, and we didn't have sex, we didn't live together, we didn't do any of that. We had this long distance relationship for three years and then I got married at 27. And I was proud of myself. I'm going to wait until I'm older to get married and the ripe old age of 27,.

42:50

I did actually get married.

42:53 - Sam (Host)

Well, long distance would be really good for purity culture, I expect. It was it was, oh, my goodness, okay. So I mean we sort of diverted from the shaking foundation, but I want to go back to that, because what was that like for you to be? You know, interacting with people who you know were not homeschooled, who didn't have the same you know religious beliefs or background that you did, and starting to go. How can I hold this with this that's so opposing that's so imposing.

43:38 - Megan (Guest)

So one thing I do feel proud of when I look back on that time of becoming a therapist is that I did not incorporate my beliefs into my work with my clients, even as a 20 something year old, and I, I think I always knew that client self-determination and like being a non-coercive and non-manipulative was what was ethically sound practice, you know. So I I thankfully did not go down that path and I was able to kind of hold space for these two different worlds. But it was in my early twenties, with that toxic relationship, that the foundation was really crumbling because I was confronted with the grotesqueness of the bigotry and the hatefulness in that church I was going to because I was going to his church at that point and there were a couple of really traumatic things that happened in that church. Um, with a church leader and you know he was imprisoned for sexually assaulting I mean she was living with them from nine to 13 and he was in like 60 years old and he was in leadership and repeatedly and the church was divided over it, the church was blaming her for seducing him as a nine-year-old and so those things that I couldn't, I could not deal. So what began happening was not a cognitive awareness, as much as I began to feel in my body that I physically could not get out of bed to go to church.

45:13

And I was a Sunday school teacher of little four-year-olds for a period of that time. And you know I it's. You know they ask you if you're willing to serve in that way and I was like, oh yeah, I can, I can teach a pack of four-year-olds I'm doing play therapy, it's so easy. And then I'm preparing these lessons. I'm like I don't want to teach them this. So we really. I mean, even when I was a Sunday school teacher, I didn't really even teach like anything that was ugly or coercive or fearful.

45:48

We just played a lot. And then and then I escaped out the back door. I parked by the back door around the back of the church.

45:56

So I didn't even go to the service afterwards, I would just go fulfill my obligation, I would like sneak out to my car and drive away. And so that went on for like six months to a year away. I was going less and less frequently. I was feeling a lot of guilt about it. All of my friends, all of my social supports were still in that religious community, so I wasn't thinking about it cognitively or bringing anything into conscious awareness that I was not in agreeance with Christianity as a whole. I just couldn't go to that church. Yeah, so when I did get married at 27 and moved to Washington, my husband at the time had not found a church and he was in the military. Military guys are typically not super known for being very churchy.

46:46

So it wasn't like he just was kind of doing his own thing, living in the barracks, living kind of like a single guy life out there.

46:52

And then I came out and got an apartment and we just never found a church. And over the next couple of years it was actually him that began to read books by atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, and just talking about um, kind of confronting his indoctrination because he was very heavily indoctrinated as well, also had a background in being homeschooled and it was so he was able to confront that. And then, as he actually brought it into conscious awareness for me, the the rest of everything just fell away for me and I was like, oh, I don't believe this anymore and actually this, so many of these teachings have been harmful and toxic. And so that's when I would say I finally kind of owned the label of non religious. That's how I referred to myself. I still couldn't call myself an atheist because that was just too like, too big of a word to use. Yeah, but I would say non-religious and feel comfortable saying that.

48:01 - Sam (Host)

So the indoctrination is crumbling, but what is happening at this point for your personal relationship with God, because those two things are not always the same for a lot of people?

48:14 - Megan (Guest)

Right. So there is a lot of push and pull there. So I would drift away from God or my journaling and praying and whatever, and then I would come back in a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then I would have like pretty emotional experience around it. So it was a lot of push and pull, pretty emotional experience around it. So it was a lot of push and pull. Um, yeah, I mean up through that whole period of time where I was recognizing the toxicity in the church I was going to, I certainly was not disowning Jesus or disowning God, god as a figure, for disowning God, god as a figure, you know, I think I really admired Jesus, even in my 20s because, you know, I still wanted to help people.

49:05

I still want to help you Even now it just looks a lot different, but I just his message of love really resonated with me even through my 20s, so I wasn't ready to let that go. But I had a lot of guilt and shame when I drifted and then would come back or I started doing things you know like drinking alcohol, or you know hanging, going to bars or things like that, where you know know that was backsliding behavior.

49:36 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, I mean for people who?

49:39 - Megan (Guest)

I mean people are not seeing this, but um, megan is sitting here with her shoulders out like you know even that like yeah, it's funny the things that we you know that we tend to do, it's like tipping, like diptoeing into the, into the water, before you sort of just jump in yeah, I mean, yeah, dressing to be provocative or to be sexy, to go to the bars when I was in my early 20s, was like that was my rebellion in a way. But I didn't see myself as rebelling, I just saw myself, I don't know. It was a very slow, slow process for me and I kept a lot of it hidden from my mom or from really conservative Christian friends. But then you had those certain Christian friends who were also doing it, so then you could do it with them and then it felt okay, yeah was there a moment that you remember going?

50:45

I don't believe in God anymore no, okay, no, I don't think there ever was that moment. There was definitely a moment where I realized the bible is very fallible. I grew up believing it was infallible and that it was inaccurate in a lot of ways, missing a lot of things, and then it was used as a tool to control and coerce. I OK. So when I got to Washington I didn't go straight to atheism at all. Pendulum swung over to what I would call new age spirituality, where I really embrace the idea of law of attraction. Everything's connected, there is a universe that brings, like this energetic force, and that was that helped me actually get away from this authoritarian god figure, because that felt very loving and inclusive, like everybody has access and there's not a place of eternal torment.

52:00

There was a moment where I didn't believe in hell anymore, that's for sure as well. Um, so I pendulum swung over to that, bought into that hard, and then my who's now my ex-husband, but he was very into the atheism thing. So it was almost like this triangle. So I swung over here to new age spirituality. He swung over here to atheism and then I kind of like found something in the center of all that. So you know, even to this day and I don't. There are still things that feel unexplainable to me, but I also don't think that my thoughts are totally creating my reality and that there's inequities and injustices that people are up against that they cannot think away or, you know, attract themselves out of that situation. Um so, but it's still weird for me to say god does not exist. So I'm not. I don't believe in the authoritarian father, god figure. I don't really believe in that universal energy. I don't really know what I believe. Who knows where I am? Let's be honest, I don't know either.

53:13 - Sam (Host)

I don't think anybody who is like um, I find I find so many people who are, you know, whether you use the term deconstruction, detangling whatever in that sphere um, I find that the most comfort eventuates to being able to say I don't know, and for that I don't know, to not induce crippling fear and anxiety.

53:38 - Megan (Guest)

Yes, exactly yes. So I think freedom for me is just not having the answers, and I don't have to have an answer ready for every man that asketh of the hope that is in you. If you remember that Bible verse, so that created a lot of anxiety where I need to know what I believe about everything, not just religion or the afterlife or whatever. But that mentality of you need to know what you believe was instilled very early on and so you're right, like just being in a space where it's like I don't know you, you believe in the law of attraction or you believe there's absolutely no God and what. That's fine Like if that is is working for you and it's not hurting anyone else, that is totally fine, and I don't have to know what you believe. Necessarily I don't have to do what I believe.

54:29 - Sam (Host)

Yeah, the freedom to create connections with people that aren't belief based is like baffling as well. So many people where particularly their social network was just all consuming to have a connection with someone oh, you know, that's. I play tennis with them. Like what else do you do? That's it, like that's all I do with them, to be able to have connections that are just about mutual common, common interests.

55:11 - Megan (Guest)

Um, is such an adjustment period, I find um yeah and to not care what they believe yeah, like it doesn't even need to come up. Yeah, absolutely whereas when you're in this indoctrinated space. That's like the first question what do they believe? Are they safe to be around?

55:32 - Sam (Host)

yeah, or like it often, um, I find in particular this is in particular when I speak to americans is that it comes from what church do you go to? Yes, that tells somebody where they stand in their belief system. Sometimes it tells them what family they come from, all of those sorts of things. That's not quite as um, uh, infiltrated in australia, but I find whenever I speak to an american that tends to be the um, it's the question where you get a lot of answers oh, absolutely, and I grew up in a Baptist type culture.

56:17

And.

56:19 - Megan (Guest)

I was talking with somebody recently. He was interviewing me for his YouTube channel and he called it the frozen chosen. Because you don't have any exuberance in your worship style. It's hymnals. You don't have anything beyond piano. You don't like. It's very stoic kind of worship. And so that what you're saying is accurate, because when you found out, somebody went to an assemblies of god church where they believed in speaking in tongues and they had very exuberant worship styles, we were very skeptical of those folks like Like they might be Christians, but we still should steer clear of them because they have got some things quite wrong.

57:00

Yeah so absolutely Like finding out oh, is this a first Baptist churchgoer? Is this assemblies of God churchgoer? And then you know how to interact with them, yeah.

57:10 - Sam (Host)

Are they a safe person? Are they not a safe person? Yeah, yeah, are they a safe person? Are they not a safe person? Yeah, yeah. What was it like for you to start integrating your life into your work? Oh, wow.

57:23 - Megan (Guest)

So I really began last summer, so June of 23,. It's been almost a year now. Depending on when this podcast is released, it may have been a year by then.

57:36

But so I really began in June of 23, when I started posting on social media and I had already had a private practice seeing clients. But it was around more common issues like relationship issues, codependency, all of those kinds of things, perfectionism, people pleasing all of which are major issues for people recovering from high control religion, by the way. But a year before that I had begun posting and thinking I wanted to lean into that work and, as I'm sure you know, the world of social media is not kind. It can be quite toxic and there can be a lot of really harsh pushback for people with a message like the message you and I have. And when that started hitting me then and I didn't know how to structure it or what boundaries to set, how to handle the comments like I thought I needed to comment and dialogue with people, it was too much. So I shut that down after probably only a month or two and just put it on the shelf. I was like I can't do this.

58:45

There were things going on in my personal life as well. For example, I had just separated from my husband. Not long before that, we were going through a divorce, um. So personally my life was in quite a bit of upheaval and then to have this religious trauma so activated when I didn't even really own that that's what it was or know that that's what it was, um, it was just, it was too much. So, even though I had kind of deconstructed and released the beliefs, I hadn't really done enough of the healing work around it or knew how to protect myself from the ugliness and the vitriol that comes when you are speaking out against it or against these high control groups. So I did.

59:35

You know, I was back in therapy and really confronted a lot of that and did a lot more self-education, did a lot of understanding cult, mind control. That's when everything found a place for me, when I found Stephen Hassan's work combating cult mind control and I realized that's why the term religious trauma didn't ever feel like a fit for me because it was this mind control I was under which was so damaging and so toxic. But I didn't have, you know, the flashbacks and I didn't have the anxiety. I didn't have any of that. But it's because I was so dissociated all the time because of the mind control. And now I can own that.

That is religious trauma of course too, but so that was a game changer for me, and when I understood that evangelical Christianity, and especially the fundamentalist version of it that I grew up in, was a cult, like I came to be able to call it that, because of the behavior control, thought control, motion control, information control those are kind of the criteria that were so front and center I was able to begin to educate people about it in a way that felt grounded and felt there was more confidence there, and I set the boundaries early on that I am not dialoguing with people who are indoctrinated, because there's no point.

I feel like um it's trying to have an have a rational conversation with an intoxicated person.

Yes, yes, exactly they're. They're not able to hear you, yeah, and I know what that's like because I went, you know, not super, super long ago. I wasn't able to hear people either, right, so I know what that's like. So why would I get lost in the weeds with that? And then, when it was so disruptive to my emotional wellbeing, so I set a rule very early on with social media that any comments like that would just get deleted right away. I wasn't even dialing up people who get blocked, I would delete.

And then I ended up building what felt like a really safe, vibrant community of people who did want to comment and did want to learn more and did want to share with each other. And so it just kind of naturally, once I set those boundaries and kept all of the ugliness out very intentionally, the community itself began to flourish and I began to learn from people. So I have, of course, have my own lens. I'm dealing all of this through, but then there's people with all kinds of other religious backgrounds that are telling me their stories and then we see the common threads and then I can share more based on all this other information I'm gathering and have people connected in a private Facebook group now, which is just an incredible space for people to kind of share and get feedback from one another, and so it just evolved over time.

But I made the decision this spring so spring of 2024, to let go of my other part of my practice where I was still seeing people. You know, I've been seeing some people for several years so to really let them go to kind of get off insurances all together and really focus just on religious harm recovery work and build that up and focus on online education, building online community and working one-on-one coaching, and so in less than a year here we are's. So it's been quick the turnaround.

Wow. And so, in this post-traumatic growth stage, what brings you joy and peace?

Oh, so many things. Life feels just joyful now in general, when you don't have that intensity hanging over you all the time. So just actually living my life brings me joy. I'm not living for eternity anymore and disregarding the day to day. But to answer more specifically, what brings me joy?

I have my two little paw people that live with me, fitzgerald and Zelda. They're my cats, so they show up sometimes in my social media and things like that. I'm engaged, so we're getting married in August of 2024. And he grew up non religious, so that's awesome gosh, I'd say.

He grew up unchurched he probably thinks that some of the things you're saying seem insane. That's what I find.

So this is how I knew pretty early on he was probably the one for me is he did not understand my background, but I told him I was just beginning to explore the world of religious trauma recovery at that point. And we met on a dating app and one of the questions is something like that you feel passionately about. And so I decided to vet him by essentially saying this is what I work with, this is what I care about. And so after our first date he was actually visiting from Maui, hawaii, and I was in Pennsylvania. So it was a whole kind of magical experience. This is where I do believe in the universe kind of bringing people together.

But after he went back he was like I want to understand your background more. Do you have any books you could recommend that would help me understand how you were raised and what your experience was? And I had him read Unfollow by Megan Phelps Roper, who grew up in the Wells. What was it? Something I can't think of it, but her it was a very Westboro Baptist, that's what it was. So and they were in the news I mean, they're really so that and pure by Linda K Klein to understand purity culture. And he read both of those and we talked about them on our video call dates. So, yeah, so he didn't understand it, but he is a learner and very curious and very open and so he, you know, wanted to understand, which is pretty amazing yeah, and planning weddings are fun.

Well, we're eloping, so we're not really planning a wedding.

We're just gonna go find a little waterfall and say our vows oh lovely I mean, weddings are planning.

Weddings are fun, but they're also a lot, so I can get behind that. That sounds like a much better option. Um, oh okay. I have been finishing these episodes by asking what would you say to somebody who is deep in their deconstruction or deep in that destabilizing phase oh so many things because it looks so different for different people, right?

um, I think that I would encourage them to try to find at least one other person who gets it. When I came out of that setting or that world, it was very isolating for me because I was raised in it. All of my childhood connections were part of it. My college friends were all part of it. My family was all part of it. I didn't really know how to make friends outside of that. My college friends were all part of it. My family was all part of it. I didn't really know how to make friends outside of that. I was going through a divorce. So once I started I mean even connecting with people online, which is what you and I do a lot of, um, that can be so healing. Just to have validation of somebody else gets this really weird isolating thing that we went through. So getting connected, I would say, is probably my biggest piece of advice.

I love that. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. This has been great. It's been so lovely.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you. Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.