In episode #69, we talk with Dr. Laura Anderson, co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute, about the ways that Evangelical structures set up the sixth deadly sexual sin, "Don't say no", especially to your "God given gender roles".

In part 2 of our interview, Laura talks with us about the devastating implications of "Don't say no", including:

The involvement of guilt and shame (10:45): Laura describes, "We get experiences where people are having very different lived experiences [than church teachings] and then feeling like absolute shit afterwards because it's must mean something about them that it didn't go how it was supposed to. It almost would feel more comforting to be racked with guilt and shame."
The ways that our bodies respond (17:20): Laura explains that folks who are working their way out of high control religious spaces often have a process of "our body responds to the thing that happens to us. Typically that's a result of something that's too much, too soon, too fast, overwhelms our body, our nervous system's ability to cope and come back to a place of safety." More on this later.
The distinction between acute and complex trauma (20:45): Trauma responses can happen as a result of a one-time incident (acute) or the cumulation of incidents (complex). Laura reflects, "Whereas when we're talking about more complex trauma that has happened over the span of years and decades, such as trauma in high control religion, I have to learn how to integrate that into my life to realize, I literally cannot process every single moment of every single time something happened. because we would be doing that for the rest of our life and then some."
The first steps of healing (34:15): Laura encourages folks to "slow it down, engaging in relationships in smaller bite size pieces so that at the very least we're not overwhelming ourselves back to the point of shutdown." Laura's dog Phoebe played a really important role in her healing.
Healing in relationships (40:30): Laura describes her partner's response to pain, where he said "That's not a normal experience. We don't just push through the pain. This is not something you just grit your teeth and go through it . We want this to be a connecting experience, so therefore we take care of the pain first."

And we close the episode with two tips for Relationship 101 (53:45):

Pause. Julia explains, "Create some time between an ask and a response, particularly from a partner."
Cultivate intimacy outside of sexuality. Jeremiah asks two important questions for consideration. 1) What are some ways that you practice intimacy outside of sexuality with your partner? 2) How can you cultivate these parts of your relationship, especially when sexuality may be more challenging?

An enormous thanks to Dr. Laura Anderson for her wisdom and bravery in sharing her story!

Let's heal together!

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