It is not lost on me – “The Agnostic Therapist,” an EXvangelical queer woman who helps clients recover from religious harm – that my favorite team, the San Diego Padres, is named after the Catholic Franciscan Friar missionary colonizers who forced their religion on the indigenous folks of this region. Talk about religious trauma! I…
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church, by Sarah McCammon As someone who left evangelical Christianity behind over 25 years ago, one of the most striking things I’ve noticed in my work as a therapist (and from reading about others’ experiences) is how much white evangelical culture has NOT changed. Clearly, the…
We often think of coming out as something that happens in one’s younger years. For many of us, the teen years are a time of exploration and experimentation, as well as a time of identifying who we are as an individual. When we are free to fully explore ourselves and our sexuality without judgment or…
What does it mean when we have internalized homophobia? When someone internalizes their family’s, religion’s, or culture’s negative attitudes and beliefs about being queer, this results in feelings of shame, guilt, and self-hatred. It is a common side effect of being raised in evangelical purity culture. When someone is raised in a high-control religion, they…
So you want to see a therapist. But how do you find the right one? Where do you even start with that? If you have health insurance coverage, you can go to your insurance website and get a list of names, but that tells you little-to-nothing about the actual therapists themselves. How do you know…
Purity culture. I didn’t have that name for it when I was young. I just heard over and over again that sex is only for married men and women, the end, full stop. To reinforce this, when I was 13 my parents gave me a gold ring to wear, with a little rose on it…
You’ve deconstructed and deconverted and haven’t been in a church in years, except for weddings and funerals. You’re pretty clear on your beliefs – or lack thereof. So is it possible that the old programming is still impacting your daily life? Absolutely. Here are several ways you may be seeing this stuff show up long…
Grief is a Rollercoaster. It takes us on a wild ride through multiple emotions. And not the fun kind of ride. Losing someone significant is never easy, and it can get more complicated when you’ve left behind your religious beliefs. Grieving when you are exvangelical, ex-Mormon, or any other “ex,” you may feel like you…
Florida’s state government has done at least one thing right (despite some of the horrible moves it has been making recently). It allows licensed, out-of-state mental health clinicians like me to provide telehealth (online) services. Now that I have been officially approved, I am excited to be able to connect with Florida clients, especially members…
CW: abortion ”Why should I care if my therapist is identified as secular? Don’t all therapists have to be unbiased with their clients?” This is a reasonable question. Psychotherapists do try to be unbiased about a great number of things, but we are also human beings. As licensed professionals, we are ethically obligated to, as…