Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science

by Mike McHargue

So I went on a mission to learn the neuroscience behind psychotherapy. It seemed such a waste of time to talk about the same thing over and over or to pay someone to cry in her office for 50 minutes a week. But it turns out that my therapist was right. Trauma leaves an impression on your brain. And when you recall traumatic events from your past, or when you experience things that remind you of them, your amygdala re-creates the fear and pain you had in those moments. Leaving my church was traumatic, and that trauma was amplified by my childhood experiences of rejection. That sentence, simple as it is, brings tears to my eyes even now as I type these words. My fierce independence, my willingness to walk away from the crowd, was merely a coping strategy I’d developed in response to being bullied. The way I played it, no one could reject me if I didn’t need them in the first place.