Do you have a perfect family that is just super accepting, wildly supportive and celebrates you exactly as you are? Is your family open-minded, direct in their communication, clear in their boundaries, and emotionally mature? Oh. Hmm no? Not so much? It would be nice if we all were lucky enough to have that kind…
Someone pissed me off on my neighborhood walk this morning. The thing they did is, admittedly, a general pet peeve of mine, but today I noticed that my internal reaction was a bit disproportionate. Here’s the scenario: I’m walking alone down the sidewalk, and I come up against two or three people moving in the…
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…
Clients often come to me utterly frustrated with their own negativity. They’re annoyed with their inner critic. They’re tired of a fearful outlook regularly ruining their days. They’re able to identify “negative self-talk,” and they want to know how to make it stop. They’re exhausted by worry and the thought of worst-case scenarios, and then…
For many LGBTQ+ exvangelical individuals, the process of leaving the evangelical Christian church and coming to terms with their sexuality can be a tough process. Often, the teachings of the church can instill feelings of shame, self-doubt, and self-criticism that linger long after leaving the faith, and this is even more true for queer and…
Behavior change is hard. It can be so frustrating when we catch ourselves doing the old thing when we desperately want to be doing a new thing. Often we are painfully conscious of our patterns, watching them play out like a movie we have seen a thousand times before. It might be something mundane like compulsively checking your phone, or something complex like the way you express emotional reactivity in a relationship.
“And then, I just broke down.” We know this phrase. You’ve probably said it. I know I have. “I broke down” doesn’t mean you became sick, or that you suddenly couldn’t move your body, or that your brain stopped working. There’s no actual breaking down of anything. It simply means you cried. That’s it. More…
The term “exvangelical” was coined in 2016 for folks who have walked away from the evangelical Christian religion. You might be an exvangelical if you feel a twinge of discomfort just seeing me refer to Christianity as a religion. I left the faith more than two decades ago, but that old trope still pops up…
We humans are independent thinkers… mostly. We have also evolved as social, tribal creatures, and we are hardwired to fit in with our group. We learn from the people around us – family, friends, classmates – whether we want to or not.