You Are Your Own Quotes

“Within fundamentalism, humans are trained towards passivity and codependence because of the emphasis put upon external guidance and divine control.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“People must be able to reconstruct their own pattern of meaning, regardless of what it looks like or how long it takes—it simply must be all their own. Experiencing depression or numbness is normal during this phase of recovery (Winell 23). I have had clients who have even gone so far as to describe it by saying, “I don’t feel alive.” Losing a former faith story means losing the meaning-making method by which a person made sense of their life and the world around them.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“For many, losing god feels like losing a parent, and that loss has the potential to be devastating (Winell 4). The loss of god is an extremely complicated grief. People feel shame for their grief, believing they should be able to get over the loss of god quickly or they should not feel so devastated. They may feel that their devotion was simply a set of cognitive beliefs, when in reality their belief had deep emotional and relational impact.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“very often for people to begin to heal they need permission to connect fully with their own anger first. This is not an easy task for people who have spent most of their life being told that anger was disobedience and that disobedience was sin.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“This, in turn, can result in addictive tendencies and often leads to codependency in romantic relationships—especially for Evangelical Christian women who have had the learned-helplessness of submissive and subservient roles instilled into them for so long.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“And if holy scripture told me that my own flesh was solely something to hate, to vilify, and to blame then the body that it covered—my own body—was someone I could not and should not ever attempt to relate to, understand, or love.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“In Evangelical circles, perfection is demanded—yet not attained—daily causing inner conflict and fracturing self-worth.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“The refugees of these doctrines often cannot seem to connect to themselves, their bodies, or to other people. Many of them experience anxiety, depression, and panic that they aren’t able to explain, and they don’t feel the inner permission to own their emotions, trust themselves, find peace, or experience pleasure.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Aside from physical punishment, to have all natural human reactions to frightening doctrines rejected as sin or lack of faith, is akin to undergoing emotional torture.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“The separation phase of leaving my previous environment broke my heart; but that breaking is necessary for an individual to be able to connect with what allows them to begin to rebuild.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“For many, this relational reconnection with themselves is a brand new experience of learning to trust and be connected with their body for the very first time. It speaks to the necessary unlearning process for many coming out of Evangelical environments because for so long the physical body was seen as something dangerous or guilty or of providing, at the least, false information about reality and, at the worst, a reason for eternal torture.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Without support, it can be extremely difficult to move toward connecting with emotions because the former shaming voices of indoctrination haunt, whispering that emotions are sinful.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“The separation phase of leaving my previous environment broke my heart; but that breaking is necessary for an individual to be able connect with what allows them to begin to rebuild. Confusion and avoidance can be a dance, more circular than linear, and the process takes the time it needs. Having patience for oneself during the process is crucial, considering that all notions of personhood, purpose, “relationship to others, explanations about the world, interpretations of the past, expectations for the future, and directions about how to feel, think, make decisions, and lead your life have been lost” (Winell 17). The confusion phase often sets in very quickly because the previously provided foundation of certainty to stand upon is suddenly gone, and avoidance often enters not long after because the overwhelming reality of everything that has been lost or has changed can be too much to handle.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“It is becoming increasingly clear that the predominant determining factor in predicting the eventual development of PTSD is whether or not dissociation occurred during a traumatic event, as dissociation directly correlates with the deployment of the freeze response in the face of threat (Rothschild 13).”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“But the way this supposed good news felt within my body was as if Jesus needed to convince this god that I was lovable in the first place. And even then, I was only lovable because of the fact that Jesus did something on my behalf and his blood now “covered” me.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“I know now what was never taught to me—that there has always been deep debate occurring amongst individuals and denominations as to whether or not the doctrine of hell is rooted in an incorrect translation of the Christian scripture—but a theological belief in a place of eternal torment after physical death is a core tenet of most Evangelical Christianity.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Believing that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god” often makes it difficult to develop positive feelings towards those who do not share this belief—because their failure to believe makes them unworthy of compassion or empathy.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Once they reconnect to themselves, they will be able to stand firm in the full awareness that all people are safe and loved and accepted just as they are. They can find their purpose in this new and real good news to share: You are your own. Just as you have always been.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“I believe that people need to know that what they were taught to believe under Evangelical doctrine can legitimately be defined as trauma. I believe that the doctrine passed on by parents, teachers, pastors, and educators who may have meant their best ultimately did deep harm. Ill-intention is not a prerequisite for trauma or pain.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Southern Baptist, spent the majority of my adolescence involved in Presbyterian and Non-Denominational churches and schools (the latter, surprisingly, is its own denomination) and had a brief dabble with Catholicism in my late teens. My early 20s were given over to a denomination known as Acts 29 that espouses rigid Calvinism and “reformed” theology, right before I dove head first into Charismatic Pentecostalism prior to my eventual deconstruction and departure from the entire Christian belief narrative altogether.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity