Speaking & Training

Hi, I’m Emily, a licensed psychotherapist helping smart, sensitive people recover from Religious Trauma and high control religious systems.

I was raised at the intersection of Evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, and I love talking about the ways we can rewrite the harmful stories, and build meaningful lives after religious harm and family dysfunction.

I can help your community better understand the dynamics of high control systems that play out in churches, organizations, and families.

Survivors are speaking up about the harm done in white Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian culture, and I bring personal and professional knowledge to conversations on deconstruction and recovery.

Featured in

Podcasts

The Bodies Behind the Bus (Part I, Part II)

Welcome to Group Therapy (Purity Culture & Religious Trauma)

Hello Deconstructionists (Chipping Away at High Control Religion)

A Certain Wandering (Healing and Understanding Religious Trauma)

Your Friend, The Therapist (Dating & Relationships After Purity Culture, Political Solidarity and Community Care)

Focus on Your Own Family (Part I, Part II)

Psych Talk (Deconstructing Purity Culture)

Existential Happy Hour (Deconstruction Therapy)

Publications

Time: How to Find a Therapist

Time: 6 Lessons About Family Dynamics We Can Learn From the Spare Drama

Women's Health: 15 Signs of a Fake Friend

Very Well Mind: What to Talk About in Therapy

MBG Health: 15 Grounding Techniques to Soothe Anxiety

Some people say that if you don’t have your own children, you must “not like kids,” but that’s such a weird assumption! There are so many reasons people choose to parent or not parent, or even birth or not birth, and those cho

Growing up in high control religion, you may have been taught to avoid positive feelings or even believe that they meant you were selfish or sinful.
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I used to believe that if I got anything out of an exchange at all, it didn’t count

If you grew up in Purity Culture and were taught to put your romance in divine hands and just wait, it can be a shock to leave those beliefs and realize that now YOU have to take responsibility for your relationships!
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Dating brings up all

Purity Culture taught me to idolize relationship titles and structures, rather than learn the skills and practices of meaningful relationships. Purity Culture denied me the space to learn about my preferences and desires, promising that if I just kep

Growing up in a high control religion, I spent so much time worrying about getting theology right. There was so much emphasis on being correct, never straying by reading or thinking differently, never questioning, just being more and more right.
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Some of us learned early that we had to mold ourselves into whoever our caretakers needed us to be, but some of us learned we could never need anyone or anything.
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We’re the ones who you don’t worry about, because we seem indestr

Trauma is never the whole story. It’s the residue of survival.
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Unpacking what happened to you, and offering love to the ways you worked to survive can be hard, lonely, hard painful.
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But if we do it, if we bring our courage

Why are there so many similar stories of harmful work experiences in churches, missions organizations, non-profits, religious higher education, and even therapy/recovery centers?
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If you’re like me and always listening to @bbtbpod, @a

Hey, I want to be on your podcast!

I love educating therapists, survivor communities, and general audiences about healing from Religious Trauma.

My Favorite Topics Include:

Building an Authentic Life after Religious Trauma
Leaving Dysfunctional Faith Communities & Organizations
How to Heal from Purity Culture
Staying Connected to Conservative and Religious Family (without losing your cool!)
Rewriting Relationships After High Control Religion
Dating After Purity Culture - Overcoming Shame & Late Bloomer Experiences
What Every Therapist Needs to Know about Religious Trauma, Cults, & High Control Groups

CONTACT ME