How the Secular Therapy Project Helped Me Change My Life
By: Recovering Religion
Tags: Religion, Healing, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Spirituality

Let’s face it. We all could use a little therapy. Childhood trauma sounds like it should be devastating, but sometimes it can be disguised as what everyone thinks is a normal upbringing. A person doesn’t have to endure physical abuse to end up with mental scars from childhood that have an effect on our daily lives.

There’s also the emotional toll interpersonal relationships impose on us throughout the years. Each encounter can be a lesson on how to behave with other people. Sometimes, the lessons are helpful. Other times, well… those encounters are how we all end up with coping mechanisms that are more detrimental to our mental health than they are helpful.

You might be wondering why I’m spouting this depressing drivel. Well, after 27 years on this planet, I decided to go to therapy and had to face a lot more than I ever expected. Three years later, I would like to share my journey and some of the things I have learned.

How I got here

My biological father chose not to take part in my life. He had his reasons.

Meaning, his wife and his two other children had no idea I existed.

I am the offspring of a Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter and a married Baptist minister of music. They met at work and had an affair after years of friendship.

The first time I remember meeting my father was on the sidewalk at the bank. He and my mother talked for a while and when they were done, I asked, “Mama, who was that man?”. She leaned down to me and replied, “That was your daddy.”

Great way to meet your father, right? I was 6.5 years old. He ended up meeting us at a play place later that day and we played air hockey. I didn’t tell him goodbye. That was the only in-person interaction I have had with my father in my entire life. After that, he sent a birthday card when I was 10 and called specifically to fuss at my mom about an online friend she made when I was 16.

I have set this particular stage for a reason: to convey one story. I remember the moment I decided to suppress emotions.

At the age of 13, I wrote a letter to my father. In it, I essentially asked him to have some type of relationship with me. I didn’t care if it was over the phone, through the mail, or any other medium he preferred. I wasn’t asking for much. I just wanted to know him.

While I carefully folded the letter and sealed the envelope, I thought to myself, “This is the last effort I will make to have a relationship with my father. If he doesn’t respond to me now, I don’t want anything to do with him in my future.” Pretty dire words from a 13-year-old, right?

It wasn’t my intention to suppress all of my emotions or to not deal with anything, but that’s the coping mechanism I developed.

Fast forward 14 years from that day and I find myself walking into a therapist’s office for the first time. I didn’t think the non-existent relationship with my father had any impact on my life. But boy could I not have been any more wrong!

Why did I make the decision to seek out therapy?

Looking back on my life, I can tell now that I had depression since I was a teenager. I slept all the time, found excuses to stay home, avoided interactions, etc. I also was still heavily indoctrinated in Christianity. The Southern Baptist variety where we stuck to the Bible like it was a “love letter from God” and took most things literally. I was taught the Garden of Eden was a real place and that Adam and Eve were the first humans. I never even questioned the logic behind any of the stories I had been told.

I used my religion as a shield against dealing with my emotions. I thought I shouldn’t be sad because God had my back. There was no reason on the planet for me to be upset. Not even when my own biological father blatantly chose to not be a part of my life. Because I had God as my father, right?

What I didn’t realize was that denying my emotions removed my ability not only to identify what was happening in my mind but it also stopped me from truly allowing myself to be vulnerable and connect with others. I spent years in unsuccessful relationships believing that I had done my best.

At the time when I finally decided to go to therapy, I had already given up my religion but I still held on to the idea that I had no real reason to be upset or sad. I was happy with my relationship, had a great job, doing well financially, and had the sweetest, coolest kid on the planet as my son. Life should have been grand, right? It wasn’t.

I was unconsciously isolating myself from my significant other and my child. I was avoiding emotions like the plague. I ignored dirty dishes and taking out the trash because I just did not have the mental capacity to put in the physical effort of cleaning up. I was keeping it together at work but shied away from really forming friendships and attachments. I could smile and joke around like everything was fine but as soon as the person walked away from my space, I put in my headphones and blocked out both the world and my own dark thoughts.

I never got to the point of wanting my life to end. I knew my son depended on me for everything and I couldn’t leave him in this world alone. However, I was pushing away everyone close to me so much that I was leaving him alone even while I was right there next to him.

Once I realized how much I had stopped talking to the people I cared about, including close friends, I knew I had to do something. What I had been doing for my entire life wasn’t working anymore.

How I found the Secular Therapy Project

I adore The Atheist Experience. I found it through The Thinking Atheist podcast videos, featuring the smooth, perfect-for-radio voice of Seth Andrews. Once I found the types of discussions Matt Dillahunty was having with people who called the show, I was hooked.

I happen to have a natural inclination towards debating and I learned a lot about philosophical arguments and logical fallacies from the discussions Matt had with callers. My mom always said I would argue with a brick wall by beating a dead horse. If I thought I was correct and had sources to back up what I said, I would be able to argue every point against another person to the point of being obnoxious.

So, The Atheist Experience show was fascinating to me. I remembered an episode where Matt was talking about Recovering from Religion, the Secular Therapy Project, and The Clergy Project. I figured I would give that a shot first before trying to find a therapist by other means.

To my delight, my home town had exactly ONE therapist registered with STP. One may be the loneliest number, but it was perfect for me.

Why STP is the shit

Signing up for STP didn’t take long. The fantastic part about STP is that all of the therapists are vetted by Recovering from Religion and use evidence-based, non-religious treatment plans. I didn’t have to worry about finding a therapist who was going to recommend I “take it to God” or “just pray about it”. I was able to look within a certain radius of my area and put in a basic description of the issues I was having. The therapists are kept anonymous while you are exchanging messages within the system. I understood it was to protect both of us.

After a few messages, I got my therapist’s contact information and filled out a form to begin therapy. We were even able to use my insurance to pay for the majority of visits throughout the year.

Because I live in the deep south, it is imperative to have both parties consider safety. I won’t name my therapist but I will say he is absolutely fantastic and has helped me in so many ways. He remains professional but also makes me feel at ease. He’s also pretty funny (even if it is in the most corny, dad joke kind of way). He always checks in to make sure what he is doing is helpful for me and truly listens to understand even when I’m making zero sense. The resources he has recommended have been invaluable. When I do have to pay by the session, it’s a reasonable price and doesn’t empty my bank account.

Within the first few therapy sessions, I learned a few things about myself. I was horrible at identifying my own emotions and had zero vocabulary for discussing them. I really didn’t ever take time to work through my feelings.

Developing an Emotional Vocabulary

We all know the words happy, sad, mad and content. We know the general sensations associated with those words. We know how someone’s face usually looks when any of those words can be used to describe their current mood. Happy typically means smiling and laughing. I know when I’m really happy I will be bouncing off of the walls and talking a lot. Sad typically means your head is held down. You may be frowning or shedding tears. I feel that an ugly cry has to be a universal human experience. If that is not something you have ever gone through, consider yourself lucky. 0/10 would not recommend.

However, what I learned is that with every feeling we have, there are usually at least 3 descriptive words we can use. That means happy, sad, mad, and content just become categories for other more specific words we can use to describe our feelings. For example, “happy” could mean joyful, proud, interested, appreciative, intimate, peaceful, or powerful, and each of those can have multiple meanings too. Did I just blow your mind? Because I know I felt like Pheobe on Friends when she said, “That is BRAND NEW information!” (Yes, I found a way to bring a meme into a blog post full of text. You’re welcome.).

It was difficult to realize, but saying I was sad about something wasn’t enough to help me understand where the sadness came from. I had spent so long avoiding the negative emotions (besides anger) that the concept of finding 3 words for the feelings I had seemed like an impossible task.

Identifying Emotions, Needs and Basis for Reaction

My therapist recommended I do this really weird thing. It’s called processing emotions. He said I should actually think about what I was feeling and try to label the emotions with descriptive words. All I could think to myself was, “Who does that?!?”. Apparently, that’s the healthy way to deal with the feelings you have in life. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. Why did I need to do that shit? I was fine!

You know, except for the fact I was in therapy because I was depressed to the point of being numb and severely isolating myself from the world. Oh, right… I probably needed to do that processing emotions shit more often. But how was I supposed to access a part of myself that I had not allowed out of a cage since I was 13??

I started with writing in a journal. A strange thing happened when I started writing down what I had been thinking. Thoughts that my conscious mind had not acknowledged started flowing out of me onto the paper. Dots I hadn’t connected before were laid out in front of me like Georges Seurat had put them together himself.

I would cry as I wrote because I was finally allowing myself to see and feel everything I had been suppressing for so long. It was hell. Not the fun kind of hell where all kinds of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are acceptable. No, the torture kind of hell where your nose is running and eyes are hurting from crying, your brain hurts from thinking too much and the pages of your journal are filled up with the things you never wanted to see again.

To further torture me, my therapist recommended a book called Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix. He recognized a large portion of my issues stem from the relationships in my life. The book goes into how we choose partners based on childhood experiences that we want to resolve through our current relationships. All of which is not a conscious effort or decision.

The book explains that when we react negatively, it typically comes from an unmet, deep-seated need. With that logic, the next time I got upset about something, I stopped myself from reacting immediately and actually thought about why I had gotten upset. I journaled about the situation. That night, I was able to figure out the main reasons I react negatively — and everything goes back to my father. Talk about daddy issues, right?

However, the fact I was able to clearly draw a line between my feelings, the basis for the reaction, and the underlying need that was not being met, was a huge step in the right direction for me.

Learning to be Vulnerable

Feeling content or angry was always pretty easy for me. Those were the safe emotions. I could accept things that happened in the past and just live with it. I could get pissed off when someone didn’t treat me correctly. I was allowed both of those. It was feeling happy or sad that was frightening for me. If I felt happy, someone could take that away from me. I didn’t allow sadness because I couldn’t be weak.

What I have learned is when you don’t allow yourself to feel the whole spectrum of emotions, you don’t allow yourself to live life to the fullest. I still struggle with anxiety over feeling too happy. I still struggle to allow myself to feel sad or hurt. I struggle with sharing those emotions with another person. Being vulnerable enough to let someone see all that I am is truly terrifying. However, I understand that to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted, to acknowledge and be acknowledged, all require some level of vulnerability.

We even have to learn how to be vulnerable with ourselves. Feeling disappointed, hurt, neglected, abandoned; none of those make me a weak person. Seeing my emotions for what they are, and acknowledging where they come from, help me to be more emotionally resilient. Taking time to process helps me relate to others and maintain relationships.

Brene Brown’s words run through my head when I start to feel weak for having emotions and trying to talk about them, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weak.”

She was another torture device employed by my therapist to get me to connect to my emotions. She is a research professor at the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work and is best known for her TED Talk “The Power of Vulnerability”. If you have never heard of her, I would encourage you to look her up. She is a fantastic speaker and her books are also amazing for dealing with courage, shame and vulnerability. She summed up the epiphany I had in therapy by saying, “We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Now, where the hell was she when I was 13?

I’m not sure if I will ever be able to always go with the healthy way of processing emotions. All I know is I will forever be a work in progress and a person who strives to live my best life. We only get a short amount of time on this planet. I want to make sure I’m doing all I can to be the best version of myself, so I can give that best version to others.

Recognizing the need for a trained counselor is NOT something that should cause any shame. I have been very open about being in therapy and I brag to anyone who will listen about how much being in therapy has helped improve my life and relationships. I am a much stronger person than I used to be and have developed coping mechanisms that I never had the chance to before.

Taking care of your emotional and mental well-being is the best form of self-care anyone can do. I highly recommend it and encourage anyone reading and identifying with any part of my story to just check it out. It’s never too late to take care of you.