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Author: wellnesswithjer

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Indoctrination for Capitulation

August 7th, 2025

Indoctrination for Capitulation

Some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door recently. Normally, I ignore door-knockers. My dogs bark (as intended), I’m an introvert with limited energy, and nothing good shows up uninvited, whether that’s bug spray or Jesus. But that day, I was about to kick off my religious trauma peer support group, had just stepped out of the shower, and the interruption was irritating enough that I decided to go for it. They were not ready for me. I took their card on the condition they took mine. They couldn’t answer basic questions like what makes a source reliable or how they justify disfellowshipping. I was mildly entertained and felt like I got to burn off some steam, but I was reminded that the point of door-to-door missions aren’t about converting outsiders. They’re about conditioning insiders. After enough slammed doors and tense exchanges, these folks return to church feeling like the world is hostile and their community is the only safe place. That’s the entire point. The outside world becomes the villain, and the group becomes their shelter. Indoctrination isn’t just for kids reciting verses in Sunday school. It works just as well on adults, especially when it’s packaged as loyalty, repetition, and learned helplessness. It’s not just a path to belief, it’s training for authoritarian submission. And right now? That’s looking a lot like Fascism. 

Is there an all-loving being watching over you? Maybe he’s a jacked white guy (god’s a GILF?), an Eldritch horror like Cthulhu, or some super secret sci-fi alien like Xenu. Believing in something that absurd should be harder now that we carry the entirety of the world’s knowledge in our pockets but, alas, I think we’re beyond proving that wrong now. Because critical thinking doesn’t stand a chance against full-spectrum propaganda. And it’s not just dumb people falling for it. There are tactics built for clever people, too, sometimes explicitly in response to the critical thinking crowd. 

Take the Trinity. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit—three dudes, one god. Makes no sense, and it’s not even biblical. Early versions of Yahweh were part of a pantheon, so the Trinity was a political cleanup job centuries later when church leaders couldn’t agree on doctrine. So they said “one god, three persons,” wrote up the Nicene Creed, and made everyone repeat it until it stuck. I haven’t been to church in years and I can still recite it. That’s how indoctrination works. The point of repeating something that makes no sense isn’t belief—it’s obedience. It teaches you to ignore the cognitive dissonance in your head, to get used to not listening to your own internal alarm bells going off. You say the words with everyone else, you feel like you’re safely part of the group, and over time, you learn not to question the contradictions. Simon says, but for a fully developed brain. 

Think that sounds a little conspiratorial? We can take off the tinfoil hats and look at an example outside of religion. Remember “Lock her up”? That was the chant echoing from Trump rallies even though Hillary Clinton never got locked up, that first term or even now with a second. That slogan wasn’t about justice. It was about loyalty. It trained people to reject the basic logic that a failed real estate con man could never be the “law and order” candidate over a career politician (which, hey, let’s get rid of the two party system? Please?). But logic wasn’t the point. It was about team colors, mob energy, and pro wrestling theatrics. And friendly reminder that Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame. And that makes sense, not just because of his affinity for other awful people (fellow racist Hulk Hogan, fellow sexual abuser Vince McMahon), but because what he is at his core is a promoter. He’s a carny. He runs rigged games, collects the cash, and skips town before the crowd catches on. That’s real estate, reality TV, and his politics as well. And when a political party becomes a cult of personality, we obviously see cult mind control tactics at play. 

But that’s the whole trick of coercive control, whether it’s a church pew or a campaign rally, the goal isn’t to win an argument based on logic or evidence. Its only goal is to wear your brain down. Repeat the nonsense chant along with everyone else, stop worrying about what your brain says and just go along with the crowd! And once you’re in, the contradictions stop mattering. It’s not about belief, it’s about blind loyalty and compliance. That’s how coercive control works: not by silencing your thoughts, but by making it easier to not think at all.

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Reading Comprehension ≠ Research

August 2nd, 2024

Reading Comprehension ≠ Research

Hey gang! Guess what’s going around again? That’s right, COVID cases are once again rising over the summer, making it a fun seasonal opposite of the winter flu. I’ve talked about COVID on a recent podcast or two (Your Therapist Needs Therapy) as my wife and I had a child during the height of the pandemic and the pandemic coincided with me formally leaving organized religion. What a weird time to be alive, and for my family, time to be adding a child. I think we can look back at that time as being indicative of the worst of the internet and the misinformation spread there, as well as the egotistical celebrities coming out with their college dropout level hot takes. We also saw the rise of “dO yOuR oWn ReSeArCh” as a rallying cry of misinformed idiots everywhere. So, let’s talk about research, what it is, what it isn’t, and why the Joe Rogan’s of the world aren’t qualified to do it.

I sure like to hate on Joe Rogan, because, well, he puts out a lot of material to work with during his three hour stoner vent sessions he calls a podcast. He has a guy, Jamie I believe, who “does research” during the show, which entails googling a topic. Maybe they use Bing, maybe AskJeeves, but either way, his real-time feedback to “fact check” and “research” is understood to be a quick jaunt in a search engine. This is in no way research. It might maybe possible be a form of fact checking, but, it is important to note that reading comprehension is not enough to fact check. And as the title said already, reading comprehension does not equal research. A topic for another day is that the internet is far dumber than it used to be, and it is well on its way to being even worse with the ouroboros of AI eating its own misinformation while confidently spewing out nonsense. But just doing a quick search online for a topic requires a great deal of media literacy and research savvy to be able to get quick results fast. Now, to be fair, Jamie might have a research background, but it is hard to find any info about him that isn’t tied to the Rogan podcast or his own company, which seems to be pretty scammy and is almost assuredly a cover for the exact criticism I am laying out here. Media literacy means having the ability to identify where information comes from, and have an understanding of what makes a source reliable on a certain topic. I could pull a book from my bookshelf in my office to do research, but the top shelf is all epic fantasy (Malazan Book of the Fallen shoutout!), the middle shelf is all comics, and the bottom shelf is mostly philosophy or psychology books that would have good, verifiable information in it. If I’m pulling from Collaborative Dialogic Practice or Batman: The Long Halloween makes a big difference. I could just say “from the offices of licensed, credentialed therapist” to make my information sound credible, but again, if it’s Batman comics and I am talking about religious trauma, that might not make sense, although Batman has plenty of trauma. Media literacy is the ability to tell if your information is from a peer-reviewed journal or a random blog, a difference the internet does not highlight in it’s search results. So, media literacy is necessary to see if a source is reliable and valid, but that doesn’t even get into doing research yet. 

Research is a systematic process one does to find the answer to a question. If it is done well, it is repeatable under controlled conditions, it produces reliable results, and the results are on the topic it sets out to study (reliable and valid). Like, just this tiny bit of writing on this topic is already semester’s worth of study to understand how to control for variables, how to set your null hypothesis, how to create research that will be replicable, and how to even conduct a study in a preferably double-blind fashion. I would love to ask Joe Rogan, Aaron Rodgers, or Logan Paul to explain a double-blind study, or a null hypothesis, or even softball question of the difference between valid data and reliable data. These are research 101 questions. But all these celebrities who like to give their two cents on topics they have no formal training on do not have the background to understand how actual research is done. Aaron Rodgers did not complete his degree, which was in communications (not throwing shade, just stating it isn’t a research field that he was in), Joe Rogan dropped out of college after one semester so likely didn’t even have a major, and Logan Paul is a professional idiot but did attend Ohio State to study engineering, but he dropped out to pursue internet stardom. None of these people know how to do research, let alone read research. Because if you don’t have the foundation of how research works, reading a paper, or let’s be real here, skimming the abstract that you found in a google search, does not give you the information you need to know if the research was done well or not. Reading research is not knowing how it works, and that does not allow you to begin to understand if what you are reading is credible or not. Using my Batman analogy before, you can know how to read, but without the background knowledge in how research works, you have no frame of reference to know whether or not Batman is useful for understanding therapy, or trauma, or crime fighting. You just know how to read. And that is an important skill, as over half of Americans are below a 7th grade reading level, but it does not equate to approaching anything close to what research would look like. 

So, reading an abstract on trans athletes, or global pandemics, or political science, does not mean doing your own research. If you want to do your own research, you first need to learn how to do research. Stop listening to celebrities talk about things they don’t have the basic understanding of to even comment on. And honestly, reporters are also not good at research, so even their reporting on research can be wrong or woefully inadequate. Joe Rogan can talk about MMA and hosting reality TV, Aaron Rodgers was lovely to listen to talking about football, but their opinions on scientific topics are literally worthless. Reading comprehension is not at all doing your own research.

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Faux Moral Outrage

June 21st, 2024

Faux Moral Outrage

It’s a tale as old as time. A (usually male) leader is confronted with the potential of some consequences to their own actions and they come back with some contrived case of how they are a victim because they have the moral high ground. In this case, crazed right wing idealogue who voted to legalize bribery, Sam Alito is so, so hurt by someone using the C-word! The worst word you can say to a woman! Oh, the horror! He probably needed a lay down to calm his vapors, poor guy. Take bribes, flaunt ethical standards, show blatant partisanship towards ending democracy? All cool! But use a slang term, why, I never! Frustration about the Supreme Court aside, this tactic to distract or create false equivalency with moral outrage is often used to reduce or completely eliminate accountability. Let’s take a deeper look!

At its core, Sam Alito’s response to being blatantly partisan while serving in what is supposed to be a non-partisan role is an ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem is Latin for “to the person,” which is a common tactic where one responds to the person or character rather than the substance of the issue being addressed. Ad hominem fallacies are also at the core of tone policing, which is another way in which people with power limit and/or distract from issues raised by others with less power. None of these responses to tone, characteristics, or verbiage used address the real issue being raised, and merely serve to distract from the issue or muddy the waters. In our Sam Alito case, rather than focusing on how a reasonable person could not infer flags on his property signify his support, the media and coverage of the story shifted to the neighborhood spat in which Alito’s wife was called a famous ship from Arrested Development. Distraction achieved, now we have neighborhood drama while a sitting Supreme Court justice skates away without addressing his ethical lapse(s). (Quick aside: highlighting appropriate contextual issues regarding hypocrisy, prejudice, or factual previous behavior all may be relevant, and so just calling anything about the person in question an ad hominem attack might be inaccurate. Studying logical fallacies is fun, I promise!)

This tactic then can be widened in scope and application, to create false equivalencies out of perceived morality issues. Tone policing might mean that an argument in court or at a public hearing is shut down or ignored due to certain language, volume, or emotion not being allowed (again, usually at the discretion of the person wielding the gavel, and not a lowly petitioner). But don’t you care about the children!?!? is a rallying cry for all sorts of dubious culture war nonsense, and The Simpsons has lampooned this in the character of Rev Lovejoy’s wife, Helen, who almost always says “for heaven’s sake, won’t someone think of the children?” Protecting children is important, and the phrase originally was used to fight to end child labor, but since has been co-opted to take away LGBTQ+ rights, to censor books, and oddly, to make sure kids don’t have free lunch? **Checks notes** Yep, we don’t want kids to get fat, so we won’t feed them! Also, socialism! Hypocrisy of the forced birth party duly noted, appeals to emotion are also a logical fallacy, and the ad hominem attack follows in that if you don’t support this, clearly you don’t care about the children! Parental rights to abuse children! Also, teachers and religious personal at private schools get that right as well! What, are you going to limit religious freedom??? But limiting religious freedom isn’t the actual issue, the issue is that we have a ton of data that shows hitting children is bad for them, both physically and mentally! So, if we fake moral outrage over something made up like religious freedom, we can avoid the very real concept of abuse. And I wandered my way into my point here, but yeah, that’s the whole game. Avoid dealing with the actual substantive issues (in religious contexts this almost always is abuse) like systemic injustice and wealth inequality, and bonus points for getting to avoid any real accountability. 

And while Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a bit unscientific, the basic needs of food, water, shelter, and not being hit repeatedly are scientifically validated. Safety matters more than any perceived morality. If we’re hitting kids, refusing to feed them, or taking away their access to healthcare, we are doing it wrong. Also, with all disrespect intended, Sam Alito is a fucking cunt.

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Bro, Do You Even Regulate?

May 31st, 2024

Bro, Do You Even Regulate?

I recently had the chance to run a peer support group for ADHD folx, called ADHD AF because that’s fun, and while this could sound cliche I learned a ton from the neurodivergent peeps who showed up. The topic of regulation came up, and the way it was discussed just hit differently in my brain for some reason. So, I wanted to share the insights and the new way of presenting information that I think might be meaningful to some other neurodivergent brains out there. Come along for the ride!

I’ve discussed regulation in the blog before, talking specifically about having a regulated nervous system and how trauma can affect that. It’s a topic that comes up a bunch because we all have trauma, and when you’re a therapist with a trauma specialty you call that shit out when you see it. So, as I am wont to do, I was talking about trauma when one of the group members said (I’m paraphrasing) “hold the phone, we have to regulate our nervous system and try to regulate our dopamine too!?!?!” The wtf of that sentiment hopefully comes through in spite of the paraphrasing, because it was a real wtf moment. And my brain lit up with it, because this is a known reality to me as a therapist who helps ADHDers manage and having lived with ADHD my whole life as well, so I knew this, but for whatever reason, my brain never held up both of these facts at the same time. Yeah, we do have to regulate our nervous systems while also having to deal with a brain that doesn’t regulate the dopamine levels properly. That is… a lot to do for one brain. And that was the sentiment of the comment, and it led to a lot of great conversation about how being neurodivergent isn’t a bad, broken, or shameful thing, but it is hard! Harder than being neurotypical, and not that it’s a competition, but existing in a world that has traumatic events popping up on the regular, it can seem extra to have to deal with dysregulated executive functioning while also trying to soothe your nervous system. The semantic crux of this enlightening phrase is that we therapists tend to use the word “regulate” a lot, because we love that it implies an ongoing process, and not a one and done event. But we need to be specific about what needs to be regulated, because the body has a lot of ongoing processes that require attention in order to achieve that vaunted state of regulation.

The good news is that regulating your nervous system can have some overlap with regulating the dopamine levels in our brains, even for us neurodivergent brain types. The bad news is it doesn’t always perfectly overlap, some of the things that regulate our nervous system are specifically hard to do with low dopamine. In general, oversimplified terms, our nervous system is going to be regulated through slow, calm behaviors that allow our heart rate to lower, our brain be grounded in our senses in the present moment, a nice deep breath to center around. Obviously that isn’t true for everyone nor is it true 100% of the time even for people it describes well, but some of that is very obviously opposite of what dopamine seeking brains will be looking for. Sounds sleepy, right? And that’s good for a regulated nervous system, moving into rest and digest mode is the natural cycle to work through after being amped up. But for ADHDers, being worked up might give us a bunch of dopamine, lots of ADHD folx thrive under pressure, and feel pretty regulated while working in high intensity situations. ADHD brains like new and novel stimuli, so doing grounding in our senses that we experience every day might not sound real stimulating. And, a bunch of ADHD symptoms are actually related to sensory issues (not that the DSM covers that), so even grounding in our senses can be tough depending on where we are with our dopamine. Eating, hydrating, exercise, having an orgasm, those are all good for dopamine (again, mostly, speaking in general here, it’s a 2 page blog, not a research paper) and those can also be good for regulating our nervous system. But! Some of those can be triggering with trauma, so if we are needing to regulate our nervous system due to a dysregulation from trauma, some of those might not be awesome. Such is life, y’know? It’d just be easier if we didn’t have trauma. It’s a bummer, man, said in my best Lebowski voice.

So, yeah, ADHDers need to be aware of both regulating their dopamine levels as well as regulating their nervous system. And that is a lot of work, extra work when considering our neurotypical compatriots on this spinning rock. Awareness of course is step one, as the following steps are then responding in healthy ways with intention. Hooray! My fave mantra: Be Intentional. But easier said than done, which is a topic beyond the scope of a two page blog. I see you fellow ADHD brains, let’s body double some regulatory activities!

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Why Are Religions So Weird About Sex?

May 7th, 2024

Why Are Religions So Weird About Sex?

Did you hear about the latest sex cult in the news? It’s leaders were charged with sexual abuse, conspiracy to sex traffic, and forced labor abuses. I could be talking about NXIVM, Children of God, Branch Davidians, or the Catholic Church, although only one of those groups do we let exist in spite of knowing about its horrific abuses. Cults are headline grabbing, and even more so when they are sex cults! But sex cults aren’t really a separate thing, nearly every religion is weird about sex, and cults are just typically weirder off-shoots of religions that already have weird rules. So, what’s the deal?

This might be a short blog, because there is a simple answer. Organized religions exist as social control, and controlling sex makes controlling other aspects of human life easier. I mentioned Children of God above, and they had a practice called “flirty fishing” where female members were tasked with sleeping with strangers to get them to join the cult. If you want more great sex, come to our clubhouse and listen to our pitch about timeshares! Sex sells, we know this from any number of scandalous stories over the years. So this makes sense, and we can see evidence of it from the porn industry to the tabloid industry to beer commercials. You might therefore think that sex is a preferred sales tactic of religion, but we really only ever see sexy nun outfits around Halloween, not at a regular mass (just sexy, shredded Jesus on the cross at regular mass). Indeed, most religions are not all about free love and lots of sex, in fact, that trope is almost always in the groups that get labeled (correctly) as cults, while mainstream religions (also cults) tend to be far more limiting in their approach to sex. 

This is where social psychology comes in! If we are interested in control, we don’t actually want an abundance of resources, we want a limit (see: capitalism). Free love and lots of sex is a great recruitment tactic, but is not good for maintaining control. Free anything is not good for control, it leads to egalitarianism, sharing, and even caring! And so again, this only makes sense through the lens of control. The church teaches love, but its tactics are control. If we want control, we need to limit the resource, in this case, sex. Sex is such a good resource to build a model of control around. Sex does so much stuff! Want to feel really good? Sex. Want to feel connected to another human? Sex. Want healthy skin? Sex. Want a healthy heart? Sex. Healthy prostate? Sex. You want to keep your species alive for multiple generations? Sex! Sex does a lot for us mammals, and when it is done well it releases a ton of feel-good drugs in our brain, which our brain really likes! We (like, the royal we as a species) have a natural drive for sex, and a natural drive for procreation. So, we naturally desire this thing, and we get super-duper rewarded when we finally get this thing. Really great for control then. Demand is high, reward is high. Should we limit this very nice, very natural thing? Nope! But again, the goal is control, so it’s a nearly perfect concept. Water, food, and shelter might be better? And let’s not lie, capitalism absolutely chooses to arbitrarily limit these things. But an institution limiting these things? That’s torture (which, as I’m writing it, really feeling bad about modern society and the problems of food scarcity and homelessness as policy choices). The church can’t limit when you eat, you die if you don’t eat. The church can limit what you eat, and with whom, and even when, but it can’t get full control. And food and water, while more needed than sex, also give less of a reward. To have someone be so, so magically in love with you for giving them water, you would need to torture them into a state of excessive thirst (hey! just like the bible story of the rich man in hell). So, much higher need, less control, lower reward. Food, water, and shelter are all manipulated by the church, but there is less insane focus than with sex. And certainly in modern times, developed countries with fewer people struggling with food scarcity or homelessness, sex is the perfect control mechanism. 

If you think about a sexy person, hell! If you do sexy things outside of our agreed upon standards, hell! And probably an STI! And if you’re raised in purity culture, a bunch of guilt and shame about totally natural things. Women must dress modestly so they don’t tempt men (surprisingly less rules for men here, wonder what that’s about). A fixation on virginity, because women are property and their value is improved by an intact hymen! (That is actually such a terrible thing to write that I do want to reiterate this is the church’s stance, obviously not mine, as the hymen has nothing to do with if someone has had sex or not, nor is value ascribed by number of sexual partners, JFC (but like, not literally)) If the church creates guilt, shame, and lack of access to sex in one context (before marriage) and then allows it and even promotes it in a different context (straight, white, married missionary position) then it uses the promise of a reward as a motivation to stay in the church, and uses the reward as a means to keep people in the church. 

Now if you’re tracking all this, you might think, hang on a minute Jer, if free sex is liberating, how is the church allowing married people to have sex a way to keep people in the church? Good question! That’s the neat part, married sex is neither free nor empowering. Because, all that guilt and shame and emotional manipulation doesn’t just go away because the church says so. They get to talk the talk, but the person with all the guilt and shame has to walk the walk. Purity culture, misogyny, heteronormativity don’t just go away because a religion says our magic book says it’s okay now! These tactics aren’t to protect families, or children, or anything, these tactics are for control. So, the reward is not so rewarding, but the damage is done and now you feel stuck. Then throw in limits on contraception, a lack of knowledge on consent and science, and now you feel stuck and you have a kid or two or eight? Really stuck, and the church can totally help you with those kids assuming you send them to private school and attend church regularly. Again, from a control standpoint, this is a really good system. From a healthy society perspective, eff all the way off with this nonsense. 

Now all of this, plus the fact sex is free and readily accessible. So, it’s an actual threat to power structures that are only interested in control to have this super rewarding, free and accessible resource out there. We need to put a leash on that beast if we want to control the masses. And the church did this pretty successfully for millenia, and is still successful in some parts of the world. But, the internet takes a lot of the church’s power away, as they can’t limit access so easily, and they definitely can’t limit knowledge (doesn’t stop them from trying). So, natural cause and effect, we see the church getting weirder with it as it loses control, attacking smaller and smaller marginalized communities (gay panic didn’t last, so now trans panic, then gender non-conforming panic, also attacking IVF and surrogacy which are both very popular and well-supported but only affect a small percentage of the population). It isn’t great, and obviously very harmful to the communities that are victimized, but also harmful to the people who are in the religion unaware of the manipulation that is keeping them there. 

Sigh. I want to write about fun things, y’know? Sex is fun! Have consensual sex. Enjoy it, really live it up. Fuck religions that take a wonderful thing away and just see it as a means of control.

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“Infinite” Dignity

April 24th, 2024

“Infinite” Dignity

Famed colonizing sexual predator group, the Catholic Church, solidified their bigotry and basic misunderstanding of language last week when they released the Dignitas Infinita document. This isn’t surprising in any way, but is a great look into the manipulation tactics that organized religion will use to control, scare, and gaslight its followers. Let’s dive in!

First, the document is named incorrectly. Infinity, as understood since before the Catholic Church existed, is something that is boundless, endless, and beyond representation by numbers. The document lays out the boundaries and limits in which dignity is possible, so, pretty much the opposite of infinity. They literally could have called the document finite dignity to make it accurate. What a bunch of dunces!!!! Except, it isn’t stupidity, it’s malicious manipulation, which makes it worse actually. The same manipulation plays out regarding the concept of “unconditional love” that god has for his followers, which his holy book lays out in detail all the conditions for his love. Being a follower is a big one! This tactic is used so that the blame can never be on god, or on the church even, or any physical representation of god, like a pastor or priest. If we presuppose completion, fullness, or even abundance in one direction, then the issue must be the other way. If god has unconditional love, then it’s people that are the problem! If the church is infinitely forgiving, then it must be the person who is excommunicated that is the problem. We have completeness on one side, the lack therefore has to be the other way. It’s where gaslighting comes into cultural awareness now, when one person is never to blame we see it’s an obvious tactic to shift blame, to even presuppose blame, to the other party. We know the church is problematic, they tried to take over the world, led multiple genocides, protected and continue to protect pedophiles, and maintain many stolen cultural goods and collected wealth from their attempts at colonization. Likewise god himself according to his own word has been known to throw down a genocide or two, he’s cool with slavery, he was cool with child sacrifice until he wasn’t except for his own kid. These are clearly not entirely good entities, so the manipulation is not allowing any of that to come up. Infinite, unconditional, these are words chosen to imply that they cannot be questioned and so fault must reside elsewhere. 

And for anyone who knows the bigotry of the right wing political machine in the US, the document goes on to attack trans and gender non-conforming populations, referring to them as “annihilating the concept of nature.” Guess we found where the finite end of dignity is. And, let’s check the Catholic church’s understanding of nature: the (flat) earth was created in 6 days, donkeys and snakes can talk, humans can fly, and women are inferior to men are just a few of the highlights. They are experts according to *checks notes again* themselves, based on their preferred reading of their own book at their own book club. It’s silly that anyone takes this group seriously. They are bigots who use a fictional story to gather wealth and power so they can abuse marginalized and vulnerable communities. 

But then, the Catholic church picks a sort of random enemy by going after surrogacy. This one popped up a few years ago, but like, in a weird way a lot of people kind of just dismissed it because it didn’t seem to be mainstream. It still isn’t mainstream, surrogacy, IVF, and reproductive rights are all popular by a wide margin. But the church really took a hard stance against it here, and I want to talk about why, because simple bigotry isn’t a good explanation. The church dislikes science in general (see flying people, talking animals, young earth creationism) and it especially dislikes science that is provable and accessible to a majority of people. Conception is a big deal in the catholic church, it’s a miracle! Except, it isn’t, and when science can readily do what “only god can do” but better, then that is a problem that science not only exists, but consistently can disprove the church. You can’t disprove something that doesn’t exist, so while we can say of course Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, didn’t fly into heaven, wasn’t born of a virgin, no one is spending time, money, or energy proving that. People are spending time, energy, and money to start a family. And if god sits up in heaven with souls like lightning bolts he throws at fertilized eggs, then the church needs to keep that as a special, miraculous, magical thing. But science can do it, and do it for people where god, thoughts, and prayers have all failed. The church also has a plethora of reasons for needing to control peoples’ sex lives, but that is a whole separate topic. So, this “abomination” from the church’s perspective is wonderful and life-changing for those who are unable to conceive through other means, and it isn’t a miracle, it’s just scientific progress. Kind of suggesting that the church doesn’t really know what it’s talking about, and that perhaps if they get this wrong, they are wrong about other things as well. 

So, yeah, it’s a terrible document that really isn’t a huge surprise, except maybe in how far back the church wants to drag society. Especially not shocking that a group of old, white men who have never had (heterosexual or consensual) sex might get a bit wrong about reproductive biology. But it is interesting to see the church just go so blatant with “science is bad, let’s go back to the dark ages when we were in charge” as a clear statement. They literally talk about violence against women being wrong, and then in the next paragraph say abortion should be banned, no exceptions for rape or incest. It’s incredibly tone-deaf, but again, fascinating to see how they are going to try to hold onto power through fear and emotional manipulation. They don’t even cite the bible or try to use scripture to ground any of this, it’s literally just them stating their opinion. A decree of self-importance from a group that still fights against children who were sexually abused in the church while protecting the abusers. What a wild time to be alive.

My hope, if I may be so bold on such a depressing topic, is that like the religious right wing political movement, these unpopular, unscientific, unloving moves will continue to shrink the church’s influence and attendance. With no sense of irony, the final line of the document is a quotation from Pope Francis: “I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity which is ours. No one has the right to take it from us.” No one, including the catholic church, has a right to say some people have dignity while others do not.

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Rest as Resistance

March 4th, 2024

Rest as Resistance

Heyyo. It’s been a minute for the blog. I’ve been busy, got a lot of sticks in the fire as it were (Your Therapist Needs Therapy podcast, YouTube, Patreon, some secret projects I can’t get into yet). But I recently had to take about a week break due to illness, and it hit me quite obviously how busy I had been, and how hard it was for me to let my body rest and recover as it needed to. And like, I know this stuff. I talk to my clients regularly about listening to their bodies, creating intentional space for rest, not just simple self-care but also cultivating joy and purposeful pleasure. So, if I know it all, and know it well enough to teach it to others, why was it still hard to just take some time off?

Let’s start by zooming out. What does our modern society say about rest? I’ll rest when I’m dead is attributed to Warren Zevon, but Robert De Niro and Bon Jovi have also publicly said some version of it as well. Grind culture has risen in the past few years, with the normalization of having “side hustles” as additional income streams on top of a full-time job. Then, of course, the cookie-cutter/Henry Ford factory that is the education system, in which, you are in competition with other children to get the best grades to go to the best school so you can get the best paying job. Which, turns out, that isn’t quite right, as the best schools and best paying jobs go to the children of wealthy people, but we were still ingrained to think that if we competed enough and got good enough grades and tested high enough that life would get easier at some point. We also were raised playing games called Perfection and Operation where a loud buzzer shocked us every time we made a mistake. So, super well adjusted culturally. Not too much good news about rest. In college, staying up late to cram before a test is the norm, as is partying late to the detriment of your sleep. But also, can’t fall asleep in class or you get kicked out of class. So, again, the importance of rest is not a topic that gets discussed, it is that sleep gets in the way of being “productive” or “successful.”

So, pretty ingrained socially that our time needs to be doing the capitalistic goals of making money, but what about rest as resistance? Seems a bit far fetched. I’ve watched Braveheart a bunch, pretty sure revolutions involve violence and structural overhaul (the joke here is that Braveheart is also so far-fetched as to be fiction). Isn’t rest just having a lie-down? How are we resisting anything?

Well, this is what I struggled with recently in my illness. I still wanted to respond to emails. I was going to watch shows with my chicken noodle soup so I would have some new content ready to review for the YouTube channel. I was going to read a book and get the author on my podcast. Everything my brain thought of doing, I thought of how to try to make tie it into the business. Rest is for the weak, I need to make that money! And for those of you who know me, that is not who I am at all. And yet, when trying to slow down and let my body recover, I found it much harder than it used to be to turn it off. Owning a small business has certainly required I think about business and money more than I used to, but still, my recovery plan has usually been to sleep off a sickness until recovered. And… that wasn’t working. And it took effort to tell my brain “no more emails” and just rest. I ended up putting my phone away out of reach and queueing up some comfort movies I could fall asleep to (Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Batman TAS, and The Big Lebowski if you are curious) so my brain could stop until I slept. And that felt good. I did rest, and I did recover. But, it bothered me that it was harder than it used to be. That, then, is the whole point I think. Even being anti-capitalist, and wanting to overthrow the system, it is hard to avoid the social constructs we are socialized under. These messages are insidious, and nearly impossible to avoid at this point of our late-stage capitalism. If you just capitalism a little harder, you will finally be able to relax and live without worry! But that doesn’t work, that’s the “late-stage” part of late-stage capitalism, the upward mobility for the masses is bottle-necked and controlled by the elite level rich, like own a football team rich, or buy-off supreme court justice rich.

It is uncomfortable to realize we can’t control our destiny, and that the whole, entire game of society is rigged. But. That is why resting is resisting. We don’t need to buy in. We can take care of ourselves and our loved ones, but then we opt the fuck out. No side hustle, no grind, no taking all our hobbies and trying to monetize them or post them online. And so, now in my fully recovered state, I’ve looked for ways to add rest into my schedule. I do a lot of self-care. I work to cultivate joy. But I don’t rest often outside of sleep. I am not still very often. My recreation is active, my joy is fun movement, I’m bad at being “at rest.” I booked an hour in a float tank this past week, and I loved it. I loved it like a hard workout, I didn’t like it, but I knew it was good for me. No phone, nothing to accomplish or get done, no brain stimulation, just floating. Just letting my body release some tension and old stress. It was lovely. And really hard, but I worked through it and really benefited.

So, I don’t know where you rest, I don’t know what stillness might look like for you, but I think we all need it. I think it’s part of self-care, but it’s a different space than my more active self-care modes of exercise, playing with my kids and dogs, hiking or time in nature. So, get good sleep (!!!!) but also, resist the urge to “do” or to “go” and spend some time in just “be” and see how that feels. Ride the discomfort, the pull to check your phone, resist the engagement with capital “c” Culture, and just rest. Rest. Rest is resistance.

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Religion and Narcissism

December 26th, 2023

Religion and Narcissism

“The Narcissist’s Prayer”
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, it wasn’t my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
-Danya Craig

Sounds a bit like apologists defending the old testament god, doesn’t it? And the pervasive culture of misogyny, sexual abuse, and protection of hierarchical power imbalances that persists in christianity today all has it’s roots in the narcissistic god of the old testament. Christianity is intrinsically tied to imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and patriarchy because of power dynamics in ancient times of “might makes right.” This also explains some of the modern day religious right being so beholden to obvious-non-christian Donald Trump. In all of this, the centrality of one’s own power over others is paramount, and why christianity (and many other religions) attract so many narcissistic personalities. 

Old testament god can be a bit of a bear (like when he called bears to eat children because they made bald jokes, get it?), and even in my conservative upbringing people were aware of this, although in the 90s that was all sort of waved away with a vague reference of “but Jesus” as if that makes being pro-slavery an okay stance to take. Whoops, slavery is a bad example because the apostle Paul is totally cool with slavery in the new testament, too. Genocide then. Or child sacrifice. Old testament god was a big fan of child sacrifice, until cultural changes in other religions made the practice fall out of favor, so then old testament god got woke and ruled out child sacrifice (to keep up with the other gods, you see. Not because humans wrote the bible for social control). Except, god had kind of already promised to sacrifice his own son, so we still get John 3:16 which is about child sacrifice. And all of these concepts are tied up heavily in traditions of passover, in which Israelites were spared from the angel of death killing their firstborns, only the Egyptians’ firstborns had to die, because of unconditional love (and firstborn here implies sons, obviously, right, I know I don’t need to clarify that females in bible times only serve as property, but just in case you forgot). And modern christianity is wildly anti-semitic, so those Judaic cultural tidbits get lost over time. Luther and other protestant reformers heavily blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, and modern christians support Israel only in the idea that it will bring about Ragnarok, sorry, Judgement Day and then the Jews will convert to christianity or burn in hell eternally, which, is not actually supportive or tolerant of Judaism at all. Fun!  

I’ve lost the plot. Oh yeah, old testament god (who is the same entity as Jesus) was a narcissist. Demanding child sacrifice as a test for someone who he did not allow children for nearly 100 years, multiple genocides, torturing Job (and his family, but they were mostly property so we don’t really think of them beyond plot points), and even the Garden of Eden story in which god “gifts” his perfect creation with a perfect garden with a trick fruit tree in the middle. It’s preposterous. A friend who throws a party and invites all their friends to the backyard barbecue and gives everyone gifts but one person instead gets smallpox. And all of their ancestors also get it. That’s not a friend, that’s a psychopath. And then the gaslighting that follows is the classic abuse model, as laid out poetically in “The Narcissist’s Prayer” above. Old testament god says everything he does is perfect and right and beyond reproach, and everything you do is terrible and disgusting and deserves punishment forever. And just a fun fact, human morality has ruled that punishing others (i.e. civilians) for someone else’s crime is in fact a war crime, so the perfect all loving god has less morals than the flawed humans he created. It just never has made any sense. 

But in spite of that not making sense, it is still around. And the reason it attracts homophobes, transphobes, western chauvinists, and authoritarians is because some crazy how god is still the hero of the bible. He’s the good guy. The guy with multiple genocides, the jealous guy who constantly throws petty tests of loyalty in his followers’ faces. The guy who says to cut the babies out of their mothers’ wombs if they aren’t the proper race. So, narcissism and abuse is interwoven into christianity (and other abrahamic religions) because old testament god is abusive and is not ever held to account for that. It obviously will attract other abusers then, because the system is designed for abuse. And I think we overuse narcissism in our modern culture. Everyone who is selfish from time to time is not necessarily a narcissist. A narcissist is a diagnostic personality disorder based on a different myth, so like, that’s problematic in its own right. Not every christian is a narcissist, and all narcissists are not christian. But. The religious system within christianity is supportive of narcissistic abusers, and so narcissistic abusers will find their way to the system to take advantage of the power imbalances inherent in it. So, at the holiday gathering when you see your uncle defending a known rapist (the catholic church, Donald Trump, etc) it might not mean your uncle is a narcissist, but it does show that narcissistic abuse doesn’t bother your uncle. Or christianity in general. Probably forever and ever, amen, unfortunately. 

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The Fictional War on Christmas

December 20th, 2023

The Fictional War on Christmas

This was going to be a bit of light-hearted fun about how there was never a war on christmas and it was all privileged folks pretending they were victims, but then this past week we got some action to talk about! This past week at the Iowa state capitol, a display from the Satanic Temple that featured a mirrored goat head, the Temple’s core tenets, and some electric candles was destroyed by a religious zealot! It’s the most war on christmas we’ve had in a while! War on winter solstice probably. 

But so, first things first, there has never been a “war” on christmas (figuratively, right, obviously there have been wars fought over the holiday season, there’s legit two going on right now in our current times). No one, not Starbucks, nor the Salvation Army, or your Aunt Nancy have been mad at you for wanting to celebrate a christian rehash of a pagan celebration. You get to have your arbitrarily chosen date to celebrate your favorite deity story that is likely a rehash of an Egyptian deity. The awareness that Wee Baby Jesus ™ would not have been born in December isn’t an attack on christmas. Saying “happy holidays” isn’t an attack on christmas. It is an acknowledgement that not everyone believes in nor celebrates the Wee Baby Jesus ™. As previously mentioned, the pagans have been celebrating the solstices for eons, there is Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and the northern hemisphere celebration of a new year beginning. That is, as aptly put, holidays, as in plural. Multiple cultures celebrating different holidays all around this same few week period. So, saying happy holidays is not excluding christmas, it is simply and accurately including other holidays as well. That’s… not a war. It does say quite a bit about modern christendom that acknowledging other cultures exist is perceived as a war. That’s the actual premise of christian nationalism. But also indicative of a culture that is built on guilt and shame needing to feel victimized to strengthen the in-group/out-group bias that their religion requires to keep people in it. That’s cult 101 (as I’ve written about previously). 

Now, I guess solstice war ‘24 is kicking off a bit early, as a religious zealot (more info at the link if you’ve not read this story) has taken to vandalizing a state capitol. Guess which political party he’s from? It’s funny because it is actually a politician, one who wanted to institute a law for a 10 year penalty for destroying statues. The irony will not stop with this story. But yeah, this false victimhood creates real life problems. The desecration of something sacred to another culture would be a hate crime in other countries. And if this wasn’t the destruction of property but had been harm to a human, it would be a hate crime. The Satanic Temple is a secular institution, they don’t even believe in Satan. The biggest believers in Satan are christians, they literally and figuratively give Satan all his power. Atheists don’t believe in Satan, so when people attack stuff like this, it’s all in their own head. If you are offended that other cultures exist, that is a you problem. Other cultures get to exist. I’m not a fan of religions, but they get to exist. Other cultures, and their chosen myths, do not exist as an attack on christianity. This false victimhood and escalation of violent rhetoric on the right is going to eventually cause more than property destruction. We cannot build a society on delusional thinking. I say this in therapy all the time, human beings cannot read minds. I don’t know what will offend someone else, and it isn’t realistic that someone will know what will offend me. We can respond to differences with kindness, curiosity, and respect, because differences are not inherently threatening. Fundamentalist thinking, however, gets people to a point where any differences are threats, and this will continue to lead to violence. It’s a silly story, I literally planned to write this blog as a joke, but this victim mentality mixed with fundamentalist black-and-white thinking is dangerous. So, hopefully this guy spends some time in jail, and learns that in reality, his god is not above the bureaucratic laws of the land. And also, weird the religious right is okay with property destruction over religious imagery (not their own of course) but not against property destruction in response to extrajudicial killings by the police state. Fictional characters aren’t more important than actual people’s lives. Man, this was supposed to be a happy occasion. Ba-humbug. 

But f’real, happy holidays to you and yours. Safe travels, be kind, and I hope you find some joy this time of year. 

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Holiday Escape Hatch

November 22nd, 2023

Holiday Escape Hatch

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Food, family, football! And so, so much capitalism! But holidays can also be stressful, and for most of us, the stress is readily apparent. So, how can we enjoy the things we like about the holidays and still do our traditional family get-togethers? How can we trudge along shopping and gift wrapping when the world is on fire? Boundaries! Hooray! Boundaries around holidays are tough, so I want to talk about what I call the holiday escape hatch!

The holiday escape hatch is just what it sounds like, it is a special little cozy space that we get into and it takes us away from our overwhelming stressors! It’s a pressure release valve for when it all gets to be too much. It is not just having a breakdown or losing our shit. Our holiday escape hatch is an intentional plan that we can use as needed, specifically to avoid breaking down or losing our shit (particularly around family gatherings). Going to the in-laws for Thanksgiving? Plan your holiday escape hatch. The trick is to plan for our expected outcomes, and create our escape hatch within those plans. Want to avoid politics at the dinner table? Go check on the kids table, or take a dog for a walk! Or just get some fresh air, go to the bathroom and splash your face with water. The escape hatch is just whatever space and time you can carve out to give your brain a break. You don’t actually have to sit still for 2 hours during a meal, you can get up and go for a walk or head to the bathroom. Who is going to stop you, Gramma? No, you do you. It is better to cause a scene, be gossiped about, or get stern glances for taking care of yourself than it is to have a huge blow-up. The alternative to the escape hatch is always worse, and usually comes down to putting other peoples’ wants or expectations over our own. So don’t do that! Take care of yourself, and if it is a tiny social faux pas or slight interruption to Uncle Bill’s diatribe about immigration (while your closest foreign border is Canada) then that is preferable to ruining your own mental/emotional well-being. 

If you plan your holiday escape hatch ahead of time you are much more likely to follow it, so plan ahead! When our brains get overwhelmed, our creative problem-solving parts get shut off. So planning ahead makes it more likely that we will do something during high stress. Think through the time, space, and available resources in order to plan for your escape hatch. Changing your physical surroundings creates new stimuli for your emotional and mental state, so I usually plan for going to a different room or going outside. Take a walk, go check the football game, or, this is a Schumacher family special, go read the gas meter! Seriously, my infamously anti-social grandfather was well-known for this. He would just disappear, and like, wander around the house? He would be outside for long periods of time by himself, and if/when he was caught, he would say he was out “reading the meter.” Like, I don’t even know what for. He was a veteran and truck driver, so, no formal training in anything related to gas meters, but it was his tried-and-true excuse to get out of the house and find some solitude as needed. And, curmudgeon that he was, no one ever questioned it. 100% success rate. Pets and children are also great escape hatches, as it is socially awkward to call someone out for prioritizing the well-being of these tiny creatures. Other holiday escape hatches can be running an errand, maybe the car needs gas, or if it’s something like “holiday shopping” needing to call someone from the car, or just charge your phone in the car, whatever, find your space to take a mental break. Give yourself permission to take those breaks as needed. 

The holiday escape hatch works great for time-limited events, and I would say is useful for daily use on longer trips. But, the holiday escape hatch cannot take the place of healthy boundaries or regular stress relief. So, if you use the holiday escape hatch and are still overwhelmed, you’re likely overextending yourself or not using realistic expectations. Again, you don’t have to stay at your family’s house all day just because society says we should eat turkey on a certain day. If you want to pop in for an hour then leave again, you get to! If that’s upsetting to other people, that is their emotional issue to work though, not yours! The emotional fallout from huge blow-ups or massive breakdowns is longer and more taxing than disappointing someone for not perfectly meeting their made-up expectations (and really, all expectations are made-up). So, plan accordingly. Plan your escape hatch, but also plan to not overextend, so your escape hatch can be effective. Happy holidays! And happy escape hatching!