Hey beautiful, welcome to my podcast, Queerly Having Issues. I believe we all have our issues because we all have a story. My name is Jafeth and it's time to tell you about mine. First of all, thank you all so much for the lovely responses that I've got on my first episode and I'm very thankful that a lot of you have shared the episode on your social media. As you know, sharing is caring and that is the best way for my podcast to reach the right audience.
So just know that I really appreciate it. So welcome to the second episode. In this episode, I want to elaborate a bit more on my own personal journey in which the theory of religious trauma as an individual experience will become clearer. If you missed the first episode called religious trauma in a nutshell, it would be a good idea to listen to that one first in order to make sense of my story. I will leave a link in the description.
I want to start off with something that I once wrote in my journal. I said, I have no idea why, but one thing I know for sure. It feels like my life is on hold. And that was really what I was feeling in that moment that, you know, my life was on hold and that nothing was really happening. Of course, now I know better as I got to learn more about the impact that growing up gay in a heteronormative society and a non-affirmative environment has had on my mental health.
However, in the past, I've been looking everywhere for answers. And more importantly, I've been looking everywhere in order to find myself. As I just left religion, I felt this deep need to be safe and lovable and to feel good enough. And I was doing everything in my power to get to that place where I could experience this feeling, this inner peace that I was so desperately longing for.
As I explained in the previous episode, it's very hard for people like me who leave toxic religious environments and who want to free themselves from the indoctrination to feel safe because once you leave, you feel like you are not safe and you are not a good person. And that is the impression that the people around you give you as well. However, the more I was searching, the more confusing it all seemed to become. I was wondering if maybe I was too easily influenced by other opinions.
Like I started doubting myself. And even though obviously now I know that had been the effect of growing up with this idea that we owned the truth with a capital T. And once I started having feelings for the same sex, suddenly that wasn't so obvious anymore. It maybe felt like I didn't have my own opinion.
And I was secretly still looking for that feeling that would affirm this is the truth with a capital T. And sometimes it feels like as long as I'm not going to find that, which obviously I won't because I now believe that it doesn't exist. I'm not going to experience that inner peace anymore, which maybe is a weird thing. But of course I will have periods where I will feel calm and content and relaxed.
And at other times I might feel a little bit more anxious about the future or, you know, it's just maybe the process of surrendering to the unknown, which I now feel like that's a very important thing for human beings to experience. I believe that the truth is something that we create ourselves. And I believe that our egos like to have a kind of certainty. And as soon as we let go or are pressure to let go, all hell breaks loose basically. So for me, I felt like I was there in hell alone.
And as a result of that, I desperately started looking for answers because I was hoping that there would be some truth out there for me as well. If God really existed and he was so creative and omnipotent and majestic, then I was just hoping that he would still have a place in his heart for me. So everything I built up my life to be until that moment where I left and started deconstructing suddenly fell down beneath me.
Also it's important to explain that when I told my family that I was struggling with my same sex attraction and in this period I was still a Christian and I still thought that God would heal me and that I would, you know, that it would be a phase and every year when it was my birthday, I was like, okay, maybe next year I will wake up on my birthday and I will be straight. So when I told my family this struggle, some of them started crying.
And of course I understand that it came from a good place. I mean, they loved me and for them it also felt like, you know, this was a big struggle and probably they cried because they loved me and they didn't want to see me hurt. But at the same time, unconsciously, it gave me the feeling that something was wrong and that I needed healing. But at that time, I of course experienced it differently because I was also very much still into the theory about how people become gay.
And so on a certain moment, I started feeling this inner conviction that, okay, I feel like if God exists, then he created me this way and he wants me to be my gay self. In this process of slowly starting to accept myself, I remember that family members would suddenly want to talk to me to ask me questions about the how and why, asking me if I still had these feelings. And I remember even once I was asked that if Jesus would come visit me and offer me healing if I would take it.
And these conversations would mostly take place in the situation where it was me against two other people who were on the other side of the spectrum who basically didn't agree with what I was doing or didn't agree with my newfound ideas and my newfound identity.
Now when I look back at that, I feel like I put myself into situations that I shouldn't have put myself in in the first place, but then you do it out of love and out of like it's family and you're not that aware yet of how this will affect you in the future. And as long as I tried to be strong and confident about his love for me, regardless of my sexuality, even though inside there was a boy just desperately wanting to be loved, but in return got a feeling of not being enough.
And subconsciously I started feeling like there was something wrong with me. In my journal, I continued and I wrote down the following. It amazes me actually how they were so concerned about me. Maybe it was nice to project their own fears onto someone else, or this project kept them busy so they didn't have to face their own problems. You know, I've always felt loved within my family even though subconsciously it made me feel like I wasn't enough.
And I think I was like 11 when I sort of felt depressed and a little suicidal because I felt like an outsider in the family. But then I couldn't really, you know, I was too young to understand why, which now, you know, when I look back, I realized that I already felt different. And of course I'm well aware that the motivation for them was that they loved me and they would rather not lose me and see me burn in hell and have a life without God.
And I also see now how their environment has shaped them and has created their perspective and their point of view and the place from which they think and speak. I however went to investigate these beliefs that I had been spoonfed and soon came across many cracks.
But yes, it did bother me that the people who said that they loved me didn't put in any effort to research the topic like I did to discover their own opinion on it instead of only reading books or listening to those who were going to affirm what they already had been taught in the first place.
And I know this takes time, but for me, I always felt like I don't mind if you do not agree with how I live my life, as long as your opinion is formed because of genuine research and not because some pastor told you so. But at the same time, I now know, especially with my experience, but also the research that I have done when it comes to evangelical Christians, that for a lot of them, it isn't really an option to think for yourself.
Plus the ingrained idea that maybe they would lose their faith if they would, you know, like I did. I guess in their eyes, I was losing my faith and my foundation on which I had built my life, but for me, it felt like the complete opposite, like my foundation was gone and I was there alone. But then again, who decides when someone loses his or her or their faith? I mean, obviously that's another construct made by the same people who like to keep us in their power.
I remember that I once sent a movie to my family and it's called 'Prayers for Bobby'. And it's about this evangelical family. This boy is growing up in this family. He has to deal with all the indoctrination. And if you haven't seen the movie, spoiler alert, but Bobby, he commits suicide. That is the moment that his family starts doing research and starts looking for answers.
And then the mother of Bobby becomes this very LGBT+ activist, which of course is great, but also it's too late because Bobby is already gone. So I always felt like, okay, so is that what it takes for people to really start thinking about the impact that it has on a family member or a friend? I think it's really important to do your own research. It wouldn't be fair for me to not address what happened in my family that on a sudden moment two family members, they asked for forgiveness.
Of course, this was many years later, which was very emotional and I'm very grateful for these moments. As I know that many of us are longing for that moment of acceptance and forgiveness. Sadly, I know that for some of us, that moment might never come and we have to find a way to have peace with that. However, the damage was done. The wound was already there.
I mean, in the years between the hurtful conversations and the moment where they asked for forgiveness they were moving on with their lives while I was there hurt. While I was doubting myself, holding the pieces together, finding ways to cope, ways to survive and find acceptance and belonging and love. And I guess that's why it felt like my life was on hold.
Like I missed out on years in which I could have chased after my dreams, developed myself in other areas of my life, but instead I had to try to come to terms with who I am as a person. Adam Cohen, who is a psychotherapist, he speaks about a so-called second adolescence as a developmental life stage that we queer people might need to grow through in adulthood after navigating our first adolescence in an anti LGBTQ world. And as a result of that, a lot of us can feel underdeveloped.
We can feel so behind, so uncomfortable still in who we are. And it's like we need to have a second adolescence when we grow up in a world that doesn't allow us to fully and safely have our first. And this period can often be messy, terrifying, exhilarating, but ultimately it can be a healing chapter in our own post coming out lives.
Cohen proposes that for many of us, this second adolescence at its core is about gifting our younger selves the experiences that we missed out on and to heal the wounds that we have and that we may still be holding within us. Even now, often when I'm dreaming, I'm being confronted with dreams about my family and hurtful conversations, or, you know, I just dream that we are having arguments or fights and or that I end up crying. You know, you have this book, 'The Body Keeps The Score'.
So I guess, you know, the body stores all these memories and all these things. But even though we haven't had such conversation for years, it still can come back sometimes in my dreams, which is really crazy. But that is the reality. You can imagine the effect that it has had on me as a person. If even after all these years, even that now we are on good terms, I feel loved and respected by them. Still, it haunts me in my dreams, basically. I think as a family, we've grown immensely.
Like I'm just happy that if I have a boyfriend, he is welcome. You know, that people would ask me how my boyfriend is doing. I'm just happy that I created that space for myself. While at the same time, I feel like we don't really talk about this at all. Vulnerability is very important within relationships. And I think that because we have such different points of view on life and that we might not or at least I might not show my vulnerable self because of course I've been hurt in the past.
So it's also sort of a self protection. But also knowing that we have such different ideas that it's just good to sort of keep the peace. I think with your family you don't necessarily have to have this very deep bond. So yeah, I think that once that isn't there, the relationship will be a bit shallow, even though we love and respect each other. And I think that's a very good place to be. I saw this post on Instagram by Todd Baratz, who is called yourdiagnonsense on Instagram.
I really love his stuff. So go check it out. The other day he said, as adults, we don't need our family's approval. The harder we try to force it, the further away we get from ourselves. This is the loss. Work through it. And give yourself the approval and validation you need. Do so by developing deep relationships with like-minded people and communities. Life begins in childhood, but happens in adulthood. And I thought that was very pretty. I could very much relate to it.
And I think, you know, a lot of us queer people can relate to that and even non-queer, but I think often the chance are higher being queer that you have to deal with rejection from the family. Regardless of everything I read and heard and regardless of how it convinced me more and more to go my own way, to really put that into practice, that took me a long fucking time, honestly, for me to really believe in my own convictions.
And which is probably the reason why it has felt like my life was on hold for quite some time while actually I was healing and growing and learning with ups and downs. And even today I find it difficult at times and it makes me feel anxious often, which is the impact of religious trauma and just the effect of growing up in a non-affirmative environment.
Like I said in the previous episode, it feels like my body continues to say in this fight-flight mode, even though there's no reason for me to feel unsafe. So I remind myself, I don't have to fight anymore. It's okay. And that is what I tell myself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that in some way you could be able to relate or learn something from it. Please do share it if you feel like this episode could benefit someone you know.
If you have any questions, you can always send me a DM on Instagram at QueerlyHavingIssues and don't forget to click the follow button so you'll be notified when the next episode is online. Take care.