076: Healing From a Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts with Katherine Spearing

Has it become clear how deeply you've been hurt?

Spiritual abuse can be so subtle, you don't even know that it's happened...until it's too late. In this episode, I talk with Katherine Spearing, the founder of Tears of Eden, a non profit organization serving survivors of religious trauma. She shares about her freshly launched book, A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts, and how to find life on the other side of spiritual abuse. We talk about the systems where religious control can be found, the process of leaving fundamentalist spaces, how to honor your emotions and see your body as your friend, the difference between singleness and loneliness, and how to diversify your community. This is a must listen for anyone seeking hope for healing.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Katherine is the founder of Tears of Eden, a nonprofit supporting survivors of spiritual abuse, and the former executive producer and host of the groundbreaking podcast Uncertain, a podcast that pioneered pivotal conversations around Spiritual Abuse. She also is a Certified Trauma Recovery Practitioner working primarily with clients who have survived cults, high-control environments, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse.

Katherine is a huge advocate for the power of art to help us on our healing journey. She participates in improv theater both as a performer and coach and is the author of one novel. She has been a guest on a number of podcasts, including IndoctriNation and A Little Bit Culty, is the author of several nonfiction articles, and writes regularly at katherinespearing.com and tearsofeden.org.

Links & Resources 🔗 

Website | Tears of Eden | Instagram | Newsletter

• A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts by Katherine Spearing on Amazon | Bookshop
• RIFT by Cait West on Amazon | Bookshop
• Knowing and Being Known by Erin Moniz on Amazon | Bookshop
• Continued Conversation with Heather Gargis
• BITE Model of Authoritarian Control PDF download by Steven Hassan 

Similar Episodes You Might Like

• 005: Finding Liberation and Reclaiming Agency Through a New Story with Cait West
• 064: You're Not in Trouble with Becky Castle Miller
• 065: Reframing Our Theology of Intimacy with Erin Moniz

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Episode Transcript 📄

Katherine Spearing
One of the big messages that I had to untangle was that my experience was allowed to be true. I am allowed to feel bad and feel like this actually hurt and bothered me because part of the abuse is you're fine. And so all of these messages that were telling me that how I felt just didn't matter. Having to come to a place where maybe I can't put this label of abuse on it yet, and maybe I can't put this of cult on it yet, and maybe I can't put this label of high control church on it yet. But can I sit with this feeling and acknowledge that it doesn't feel good and that this thing really impacted me.

Brian Lee
Hey, friends. Welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for compassionate conversations and practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. As an ordained pastor and spiritual abuse survivor, I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why Broken to beloved exists. You're enjoying this podcast ad-free because of the generous support of our donors, and we could use your help. Support our work by becoming a donor to help make our programs like this podcast possible. Just head to brokentobeloved.org/support or click the link in the show notes.

Today, we're talking with Katherine Spearing her book, A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts, which addresses the spiritual abuse survivor's recovery journey. Katherine is the founder of Tears of Eden, a nonprofit supporting survivors of spiritual abuse, and the former executive producer and host of the groundbreaking podcast Uncertain, that pioneered pivotal conversations around spiritual abuse. She's also a certified trauma recovery practitioner, working primarily with clients who survive cults, high control environments, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse.

Katherine is a huge advocate for the power of art to help us on our healing journey. She participates in an improv theater, both as a performer and coach, and is the author of one novel, The Hartfords. She's been a guest on a number of podcasts, including Indoctrination and A Little Bit Culty, is the author of several non-fiction articles and writes regularly at katherinespearing.com and tearsofeden.org. Now, here's my conversation with our friend Katherine. Katherine, welcome to the podcast.

Katherine Spearing
Hello.

Brian Lee
It's been a long time we've been talking about this before we hit I'm very excited to have this conversation with you. Congratulations. Launch day for your book.

Katherine Spearing
Yay. Thank you so much.

Brian Lee
How are you feeling? Obviously, we're recording this in the past, but how do you imagine your feeling?

Katherine Spearing
Yes. How do I imagine I'm feeling as the book is releasing in real-time? Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm having a lot of fun with promo and getting to talk to people and building a launch team so that this book comes out cradled in community, which is really fun for me. Yeah, so it's been really good. I just finished recording the audiobook, and that was weird. I don't know. I got real sick of myself. I was like, I'm very sick of my story right now. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm doing it again. But also very much like, Oh, wow, this is real. This really happened. Reminder of the journey and where I am now after a lot of spiritual abuse.

Brian Lee
Yes, which we will obviously talk about A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts: The Subtle Insidious Nature of Spiritual Abuse and Life on the Other Side. We are constantly talking about moving toward healing and wholeness, and so it's that dream of the other side. So I'm excited to talk about that part of it with you. Before we even jump into that, we know each other because you spoke at, I think it was our first summit three years ago. Tears of Eden, nonprofit, very similar spaces. For people who may be unfamiliar with Tears of Eden or with you, would you give us a little background?

Katherine Spearing
Yes, absolutely. September second was our fifth anniversary. So we've been around for five years. Started exploring doing this post leaving a spiritually abusive church in 2019. Just happened to coincide with COVID. Didn't do it because of COVID, but just happened to coincide with COVID. We were already planning to do a lot of virtual things anyway, and It just happened that the entire world just set itself up just for us. There was a podcast for a while, and we did 110 episodes just exploring just topics related to spiritual abuse. And so a lot of what we do is real-time research, which is where the book comes in, too, because there's just not a ton of information about this. And so doing the podcast was a real-time research, but also creating resources for people, like genuinely original content resources for folks who have experienced spiritual abuse. We do support groups, and we keep them very small and very intimate so that folks can feel safe and get to know each other. And we provide a lot of... I would say one of the things that we focus on is, is trauma and providing information about trauma and that spiritual abuse can cause trauma and what that unique trauma looks So we do a lot of that.

And then we create a lot of the original content through our blog, just writing content as well. And that's us, that's Tears of Eden.

Brian Lee
And five years ago, this was a much smaller space than it even is today, because I think it's still small and growing. It's very small. What did that feel like for you to be leading in that tiny little space? And what were you hoping for when it started?

Katherine Spearing
Yeah, I remember like watching because deconstruction was big, faith deconstruction, and that blew up during COVID. And so many people were like, Oh, my gosh, I'm not going to church, and now I feel really great. What's going on? And they're talking about this experience of that being the awakening for a lot of people of a lot of this abuse and toxicity that's happening within evangelicalism. And so we, again, were one of the only organizations at that time that were actually talking about abuse and actually addressing this is abuse and this is abusive. We're still in that space, I would say. There's definitely so much more awareness and conversation around it, but we've grown towards, which that wasn't necessarily planned. The original first two seasons of the podcast, the tagline was The Church Needs to Do Better. It was focused on very specifically talking to the evangelical church and the institutional church and like, Hey, stop abusing people. Then we shifted, and I think it was a very natural shift based on where I was and my story, where the makeup of who was on the board at the time shift towards, we're going to focus on survivors of this space.

You can be a part of the church or not part of the church, but we're going focus on this trauma that has been caused by this abuse and what resources do people need to address this trauma that has been caused by this space. Now we are a survivor-focused organization. Then the book itself is a subset of that, of just being a survivor-focused resource, speaking directly to survivors, not necessarily speaking to an institution or a system, just providing information for survivors to understand their experience.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. You talk about naming and giving language to our experiences, especially for survivors, because we're so often walking through this fog of I have no idea what just happened. And obviously, we need to name spiritual abuse. Everyone has a different definition for it or understanding of it. How do you define it?

Katherine Spearing
The definition I use in the book, and then that we also use at Tears of Eden, is when someone deliberately uses God in the Bible to coerce, control, manipulate, oppressed, shame. But then it gets a little more nuanced, right, when we're in these high control religious spaces because there are people within those spaces, we all know them, who are doing that on purpose, right? And they're absolutely 100% manipulating the Bible to coerce and control people. Then there are the very good, beautiful, wonderful human beings within these systems who are doing the exact same thing, but they are really good, beautiful, wonderful people, and they wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for this system that's telling them this is what God tells you to do, just a very simple one of you cannot hang out with someone who doesn't identify as a Christian unless you are telling them that they're going to hell. Something as simple as that. That can be very traumatizing for the person who feels like they have to do that. But then it can also be very coercive in the manipulative to the person that they're speaking to as well, and they're doing it out of this genuine, I'm doing this because the Lord is requiring this of me.

So it gets really messy and complicated for that reason. But yeah, just a very basic definition of using God in the Bible to coerce, manipulate, control, and oppressed.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I would agree. And I think it's interesting because, and I think your story is interesting, because while you have certainly experienced that spiritual abuse in church settings, Which I think most/the majority of people in our community have experienced it in that way. It's such a bigger category than just that. There are also so many people who experience it in their family systems, which you write an awful lot about and have experienced. Tell us about what it looks like, whether it's from your own personal experience or whether it's from people that you've heard from in your community, because I think some people don't have an understanding of what that looks like outside of it happening within a church with a pastor or a priest or something like that.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah, absolutely. I think for most folks, the two are intertwined, right? Because usually the church, the family is the thing that's connecting us to the church. We're often having those two experiences simultaneously. Another experience that's very common is I had an abusive family and I go to the church for safety, and then I experience abuse within the church context. That's another common. And then in my situation is I would say that my family was the abusive system and was the spiritually abusive system. I came from a community that taught, it's called, we affectionately call it the Stay at Home Daughter Movement or the Christian patriarchy movement, where it basically trains fathers to create a little mini cult out of their family. And that was the majority of the spiritual abuse. And so I was in that situation. And then also one of those people that to the church is like, Oh, this shall be my new family. And this shall be, at least, stuff is messy with my family, but at least I will have this family here. So we're talking about experiencing spiritual abuse in the context of family. And that being just a very convoluted experience of your caregivers are abusing you, but then they're also abusing you in the name of God.

And that is just a very... Yeah, it just gets so messy and so entangled. And I had to go through this journey of parsing out what was the abuse in my family and then what was real Christianity and going to seminary. That wasn't the only reason why I went to seminary. But part of what I was excited about was what were the things that were being deliberately taught to me that were really harmful and damaging. And throughout all of that somehow maintained some affection for the Bible itself and wanted to know more about the Bible and just found it a really fascinating book and just wanted to know more, even though it was this thing that was being used to basically bully me and oppressed me and abuse me. Yeah, so it's That is a very just convoluted, messy, and very damaging experience to have to go through that in a developmental stage of life and beyond.

Brian Lee
Yeah, for sure. I'm so sorry, and thank you for sharing that. And I I think for people who are asking those big questions or having those scary thoughts, because reexamining our family systems and going back into our histories and even daring to ask the question, Hold on, was my family abusive? Is a really fraught thing, right? Yeah. And it invites so many feelings. So for people who may not know how to ask that question, let alone how to answer it, You write a lot about patriarchal systems, about fundamentalism, about purity culture. Our friend Cait West write in her book, RIFT, and all the stuff, the same things. Help people to understand when we're talking about abusive family systems in the context of spiritual abuse and all of these kinds of things that are being taught that you then need to go and untangle, what did that look like? What did that feel like for you as you had those realizations?

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. Well, I would say I started working it out while I'm still in a pretty high control religious system that I wasn't aware that I was in. And so there was a lot of very similar, and I talk about this in the book, too, there's a lot of very similar messaging that was just a little bit less overt within the context of the religious system that I landed in as well. And so there were one of the big messages that I had to untangle was that I was allowed... My experience was allowed to be true. I am allowed to feel bad and feel like this actually hurt and bothered me because part of the abuse is you're fine. Like, Oh, you think you had it tough? You don't know what I experienced. Or, Well, the Lord wants your Holiness. He doesn't want your happiness. And so all of these messages that were telling me that how I felt just didn't matter. Having to come to a place where maybe I can't put this label of abuse on it yet, and maybe I can't put this label of cult on it yet, and maybe I can't put this label of high control church on it yet.

But can I sit with this feeling and acknowledge that it doesn't feel good and that this thing really impacted me? And I went to therapy the first time because I'm like, Logically, it makes sense that this bothered, hurt me some way. But I couldn't pinpoint exactly how it did because I'm an outstanding citizen, and I have, get good grades, and I keep jobs, and there wasn't any tangible that I could see, tangible evidence that something was wrong, but I just didn't feel something didn't feel right, and I just didn't feel... I just needed to unpack this and explore it and just starting from that place of this little feeling of shame or discomfort or sadness or anger maybe, is a sign that maybe something wasn't quite right. And we can just start there and just explore that and see what comes up. And I was terrified to explore anger. I was so scared because there was this very instinctual feeling that if I started to unravel that little nugget, that it would just explode. And it didn't quite happen like that, but I did discover I have a lot of anger, a lot of rage.

And I think that especially for women to start encountering their anger and their rage at what happened to them and what was stolen from them, that takes a really long time because we're not allowed to be angry. We're told not to be angry. Be angry, but do not sin. But what does that mean? We're not really told what that means. Just allowing yourself to just sit with what is happening, what am I feeling in the present moment, and that I feel this way and this feeling is true. And even if there are these voices that are saying, You shouldn't be bothered by this, or, You shouldn't be upset by this, or, You shouldn't be still upset by this. You aren't with your parents anymore. Move on. Get over it. That that thing is still lingering, you're bitter, you're unforgiving. And so all of these things are part of that abusive system that keeps victims from really exploring what maybe happened and what's going on.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I think that truth-telling piece is so important because we're so often taught in these fundamentalist spaces, or whatever we want to call them, that it's just better to bypass. And you named so many good emotions in there and feelings that I think we're also taught to squash because you're taught that your heart is deceitful above all things. So whatever it's feeling, just ignore it or repress it or push it away. Or repent of it. Or Yeah. I mean, talk about weaponizing stuff. Or repent of your emotions because they are drawing you away from God and they are sin in and of itself. And we have so much better work today. I always talk about Becky Castle-Miller. She's an emotions coach. She's doing her PhD in that, on Jesus and his emotions. And it's like, I'm learning so much more about how God, given our feelings are, that we have to pay attention to them because they are telling us things. God had feelings, Jesus had feelings, and all these And there are so many ways that scripture is weaponized or twisted and manipulated. For example, I think of that, how often we are told over and over, just honor your father and mother, and how difficult that can make it to question the truth that we experienced of how we experienced our parents growing up.

It's like, actually, I felt really hurt by them, or I felt really harmed by them. And just even that little step to question that one thing can feel monumental, right?

Katherine Spearing
Absolutely.

Brian Lee
So how did you find your way away from that fundamental binary, black and white thinking, and move towards that permission to ask those hard questions? Yeah.

Katherine Spearing
So many things that contributed to that. I think one thing that I don't really talk about in the book at all, but when I was working as a missionary in Mexico, and I had moved out of my parents' home maybe two years prior to that. But this was the first time that I had moved away from the city that I had spent my entire life in. I'm in this new city, new environment, and suddenly I start having trouble sleeping, and I can't fall asleep at night, or I wake up at 3: 00 AM and I am awake for 4 hours or whatever. I look at that now and I was like, I think prior, I didn't I'm in trouble sleeping prior because I was in survival mode and I was still around this environment. I was still around my parents and all this stuff. And then I get out of it. And that was my trauma, starting to wake up in that moment. Didn't know that. Didn't know anything about trauma, didn't know anything about abuse. And so I started doing yoga videos to help me sleep just off of YouTube. And I think this practice of doing yoga, just 10, 15 minutes videos at night to help destress and wind down.

And sometimes I would do them if I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep, and I would do it to try and help my system calm down. For some reason, not for some reason, because that's how yoga works, I started paying more attention to my body because of that. And Even though the first probably five therapists that I saw, or every therapist that I saw up until the one that I see currently, were not trauma-trained therapists. There was something body based in that experience. They were probably addressing more of what I was doing mentally, but then I had this body-based thing that was also happening as well. Having this connection between what's going on in my mind and what's going on in my body. In this environment where you're told you can't be trusted, your body's evil, cover up, hide it, it's sinful, beat the flesh into submission, all of these things that you're being told, I am starting to experience my body as being a friend and starting to tell me things and starting to notify me of stuff and let me know and having involuntary responses and what is going on there.

I think that that really helped me to start. I would say that a lot of it started with the body of just valuing my body. If I'm in a system that's Telling me what I am feeling is not right and telling me that I can't trust my body, basically, or that this reaction I'm having is not allowed or accepted here, and I have gotten to know my body, and I see my body as a friend that's giving me information, and you're treating my body this way. It was a separate thing, a separate entity. But I would say probably similar to, I'm just making this connection in real-time. To a mother with a child, maybe I don't know that the abuse is happening to me, but when I see it happening to my kid, a different thing rises up in you, and you're like, I don't want this to happen to my kid. And that's a very common story for a lot of parents, right? We're in these systems, and then we watch what happens to our kids and how it impacts our kids. And that's the thing that wakes us up to something's not right.

And so I'd say that my physical body was like that for me of just like, I want to protect this, this thing that is being harmed. I would say that that's a huge part of getting out of this fundamentalist thinking and this binary thinking is taking that time to just understand what's happening and what our bodies are telling us and what our nervous systems are saying within this context or outside of the context and starting to Maybe it's not a black or white right or wrong situation. Maybe it's just an uncomfortable situation or a messy situation, or you're telling me one thing, but I'm experiencing something different and How do we hold space for those things and giving our systems an opportunity to learn just how to hold space for discomfort. And so many of us don't want that, right? Yeah. And we're taught to avoid that within these high control religious spaces, just shut off that feeling and overlay it with this Bible verse and move on. And if you follow God, then you're not going I feel bad. So if I do feel bad, then there's something wrong with me. Okay, shut it down.

And so to start to listen to our nervous systems when they're speaking, that is very contrary to the space.

Brian Lee
Well, it's like a trap because if you still feel something, then you must be doing something wrong because you haven't beaten your body into submission or whatever it is. So if you're still feeling things, then obviously you're not trying hard enough or you're still sinning because you're still having feelings. Yeah.

Katherine Spearing
And I was real good at controlling my emotions. Oh, me too. I took pride in the fact that I could just switch it off.

Brian Lee
Same. Yeah. Same. Because we were taught that was the right thing, Godly thing to do. It totally makes sense. And so it's moving towards having compassion for that younger version of Katherine or for me. It's just like, yeah, it totally makes sense why I did that. And I can see how completely messed it up it is now and how it's gotten me to where I am and how it's not serving me or helping me in any way. I love that you write, As we start healing from trauma, we cannot leave our bodies out. When high control religion told us to rein our bodies in and make them submit to Christ, we can free our bodies by listening to them. Our bodies are part of our humanity. They are us. To care for my body is to care for me. To trust my body is to trust myself. To give my body a voice is to acknowledge that what I have to say is important. And I think there are so many people in this community who have not heard that before. And it's such a key piece. You introduced me to Heather Gargas, right? And all this embodied approach to how we move forward from our trauma, where, again, like you're saying, so many therapists, counselors, other people are just doing this whole cognitive thing where it's like, let's just think about this or talk about this.

And it's not enough if we are still disconnected from our bodies. It's so important. I love that you say that. Anything else you want to talk about in terms of bodies?

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. Well, I feel like that's a pretty standard mechanism that high control environments use to control people is to control their bodies. And that's, I think, that we don't always... And something simple within or something universal that we're probably all familiar with is the purity culture of controlling what you wear and even just simple things of like, I don't know if you... Just things like the straps, they can be three in terms of not to. Just little things like that. But it's like, that is how they control you. This is a control mechanism. I think we see it as this take it or leave thing. And, oh, this is just a modest. This is just what you do to be modest. And we don't see it as this nefarious control mechanism. And it is. And just the sinfulness of putting a tattoo on your body and why so many people who leave high control religion go get tattoos. It's like, I can do this. I can put whatever I want on my body. Nobody is in charge of me.

Brian Lee
It's reclaiming agency. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Well, and it's rule number one for, like you're saying, high control places. I mean, it's Steven Hassan, the BITE model, to describe cults specific methods to recruit and maintain control over people. Number one is behavior. And so if I can control your behavior, guess what? I'm one-fourth of the way to make my own cult. There's so much good stuff there. Let's switch tracks real quick because I think there's such a big portion of your book is so important for so many people in our community, and it's this idea of singleness versus loneliness.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah, I love this one.

Brian Lee
As a happy single person, which in so many fundamental or evangelical cultures are just not supposed to exist. Because if you're not married, how are you a whole person? Right? What do you want to say about it? Take us there.

Katherine Spearing
Absolutely. Yes, and I'm very passionate about this, as you know. And I think that we talked about bodies being a control mechanism, and I think very specifically in evangelical communities, marriage itself is a control mechanism. It's really hard for us to recognize that because it's so common. Obviously, we want to partner, and obviously, we want to have kids, and obviously, we want to build a life together, and all this stuff. This very good thing, right? That is very good thing that a lot of people do is then taken, and then, as most things are, a good thing, taken, commandeered, and then created in this little incubator of this is the godly way, and this is what is expected of you. And it's not just expected of you, it's expected of you by a certain age a lot of times, depending on where you're located. If you get through college and you haven't locked down your partner, people start to wonder, what's going on here? You failed to lock down a man. What's wrong with you? Yeah, absolutely. And then give it one year after you're married, and where's your baby? When are you having kids?

Brian Lee
There's just never quite enough, is there?

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. And then after you had the first kid, are you going to have any more? Very invasive questions if you pull back, but within this incubator of perpetually creating our own members, we need husbands, and then we need wives to be a little bit under them because husbands are the, especially in complementarian churches, the head of the family. Then we get the kids, and then we get them into Sunday School super early, and we train them up. This is how they do it. This is a means of creating. Again, it's not marriage that's the issue. It's that this community has taken this thing and made it a means of control. I mean, controlling women and controlling children. Controlling men too, because there are so many men that don't fit this model, and they're not comfortable with it, and they don't really like it. Especially in the spaces that I was in, they were treated like they were really weak, or they weren't a strong leader or all of these things if they weren't doing the headship things, whatever rules were assigned for that. I discovered, didn't really know what it was because I was single my whole time.

I dated a little bit, but I was pretty much single my whole time working in the church. Just this awareness of I'm not quite respected. I'm not quite good enough. It wasn't just because I was a woman, it was because I wasn't bound to someone. I wasn't bound to a man. I just hit up against that wall so often. And for whatever reason, at a very, very young age, I was just like, This is dumb. This is so dumb. I should not need this thing to make myself acceptable to the world. What is going on here? And just even though I'm having this very, very, very intense, intentional message that this is what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, there was something in me that was just like, this doesn't make sense. That I need another person to be considered whole and acceptable and respected within this community.

Brian Lee
And the work you're doing is devalued because you're not paired off with someone else to validate it, right? Yeah.

Katherine Spearing
And it's scary. It's a scary community. I experience that still today within these fundamental spaces of people just being afraid of me. You're a witch. You're a witch with a cauldron.

Brian Lee
Because you don't have a husband to cover you and to approve of your ministry or the work that you're doing, right? I love that you asked this question, that you suggest a solution that you've rarely heard anywhere else. What if we all learn that being alone is not alone. We expanded our view of intimacy. We had a great conversation with Erin Moniz and her book, Knowing and Being Known, and talk about reframing our theology of intimacy. Tell us what it means for you this idea that being alone is not alone.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. Well, I think something that I've always experienced in every place that I've ever lived is having good friends. I think the fact that I didn't ever have a serious boyfriend ever helped that because these are my buddies, these are my pals. My family wasn't... I lived geographically distance from my family, so I didn't have the fallback default of family. So I had to create a chosen family and friendship And I did everywhere that I live. And currently, I have a bunch of different communities, so I don't just have one community. And that is a result of being so siloed within a church context and having only one community. And now I'm very intentional about diversifying my community so that I'm not just putting all of my emotional eggs in one community basket. I love it. I have very rich friendships and so much fun. And there are so many things that you're told you can't do if you don't have a partner. I'm not as limited as I was told I was going to be if I didn't have a partner. I have people to travel with. I I have people to spend the holidays with.

I have people to go to the movies with. I have people to go to shows with. I have people to experience things. Then if there's nobody there to go with me, I like myself, and I have a great time going by myself. One thing I haven't done by myself yet is go on a trip by myself. It's on my bucket list. Part of the reason for that is because I have a lot of friends who like to travel. If I think of a place that I want to go, I almost always have someone who wants to go with me. I haven't had to do that yet because it's very rich and full. I think about if I get to be old and I don't have a partner at that time, I'm just like, I'm going to have people, right? I'm going to have people who are going to be there for me. It's not going to be like the traditional kids take care of you in your older situation. But there's a lot of people who are in the same boat as me as well, and we're just figuring out together, and we're going to get a mansion We're going to have a cook, and we're going to have a cook, and we're going to have a chef, and we're going to have a chauffeur.

It's just going to be great. There's no part of me that feels like I'm missing out on anything. I do not feel like I'm missing out on anything. Sometimes I feel bad for married people. Married people with kids. I'm like, Sometimes I feel bad for you because I could do whatever I want, and all my money is my money. I don't have to worry about college. I don't have to worry about paying for weddings. I don't even have to worry about paying for my wedding. I could do whatever I want. It's so amazing. And I think that the church doesn't want you to know that that's an option because if you do, then you're not going to be controlled by a man.

Brian Lee
Or by them.

Katherine Spearing
Yes, exactly. Conservative effort, their means of control is gone if you are happy without this system.

Brian Lee
I think there are three key things that you mentioned. Well, I think two key things then one thought is that you're doing it together is huge. That you get to do... That you like yourself. I think that's huge. And there's such a reclamation of that sense of agency, again, with that word of, I get to do what I want, and I got to make this choice to be happy being single and to still want to pursue friendships and relationships and take trips or do things, whether it's by myself or with someone else. And Erin talks a lot about that. It's like we've limited the idea of intimacy to being in a romantic relationship only, but there's also intimacy in families. There are also intimacies in friendships. And so how do we learn to cultivate all of those things so that, like you're saying, we're not limited to one basket of things. And then if for some reason I lose that thing, there goes all of my connection.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. And I think it's a helpful thing for people who are partnered to know, too, right? Because that's a lot of pressure on your partner to be your sole intimate being. And you're not intimate with anyone else. It's too much. That's a That's a lot. That's a lot. No one can live up to that. You can diversify intimacy outside of marriage. We're not taught that in church.

Brian Lee
No.

Katherine Spearing
What's taught in church is a very enmeshed form of relationship.

Brian Lee
Enmeshed codependent.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah, absolutely. And that that's taught as a good marriage, and it's actually really unhealthy. And a lot of people experience this disorientation of like, what did I just get myself into? And having to learn just basic relational interaction, not just in the context of a marriage context, but just with friendships and community when that stuff isn't built in for you anymore. It's a very subtle but also very intentional method of keeping people trapped in this system. Then within that whole culture of you're not allowed to admit if you're struggling, If you are in a marriage and you're not happy, you're supposed to be happy. The Lord ordained this. You are with your soulmate. You're supposed to be happy. Finding, and I would say that with my one-on-one clients, I encounter that a lot of just women starting to pick at this little thing of maybe I'm not happy. And as soon as they start to pick, it's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, No, I cannot go there because of all that it will mean if I start to think maybe I'm not happy in my marriage, which is a whole nother layer to the, I'm not happy in this church context or this high control community context.

The marriage layer, that's a really, really tough one.

Brian Lee
It is. It is. Well, and then there's the abusive theology or counsel of so many leaders who say, not even I'm afraid that I might not be happy in my marriage. But for those who are actually being abused in their marriages and being counseled, but you have to go back to your husband. You can't leave. And all of this abusive stuff. There are so many layers to that. Yeah, absolutely. And so I love the idea of diversifying intimacy and connection that it's not all in one place or within one person. And this move to like ourselves after we've carried so much shame and guilt and judgment in all of these things.

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. And the part liking ourself, I feel like comes after trusting ourselves. And we're intentionally taught to not trust ourselves, right? You mentioned the verse of the heart is deceiving above all else. I like that being just a classic verse. We're taught to outsource decisions. We need to seek the people who are wiser and this people who... I used to do that all the time. I would talk to 12 people before I would make a decision. I thought I was so holy, and I loved humble, and I care about accountability. Really, I was just terrified to make a decision, and I need somebody else to make that decision for me. If 10 out of 12 people all gave me a thumbs up, then I'm like, Cool, I can do this, and I will not experience the wrath of God. That is literally how it operated for me.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And that's how we're primed and trained to do it, right? And that's numbers two and three on that bite models. If they control not just your behaviors, but also information and your thought process, and they tell you how to do things. Now we are three quarters of our way to being in a cult. I love the way you close the book, talking about the thousand tiny paper cuts, the title of the book. It's like, they may start to heal, but the scars will also be permanent. And this may be a reality, but there is another reality that thriving after abuse isn't contingent on being fully healed, that we can live thriving, fully full lives even while our body is healing. I love that because I think there are so many people who feel like their life is on pause because they're not, quote, fully healed. What does that look like for you Or what would you want someone to know about living a thriving full life even while in the process of healing?

Katherine Spearing
Yeah. Connie Baker is probably the one of the most influential people professionally who has influenced my approach to spiritual abuse the most. I would say I've learned the most from survivors. Connie is one of a few professionals who have been working in this field for a very long time. And we we invited her to come to our in-person retreat a couple of years ago. She gave us something, a resource that I was like, Whoa, this is perfect for where I am in my life right now. And it was this table of all these different life domains of work, school, family, friends, hobbies, travel, like dreams, like all of these different life domains. And then she left a few blank ones, and she was just like, fill in what you think should go in those in those domains. And she said something that was really pivotal, and she was just like, at no one time is every single one of those domains going to be 100 % amazing all the time. You may have, and she used her own example, and she was like, I was going through cancer, and it was awful. And she was like, But at the time I was going through cancer, the friendships in my life were just fantastic and phenomenal and rich and beautiful.

And having this ability to recognize, Okay, yes, this isn't going well. And also these things are. And as you said, our life is not on hold because we are struggling with this thing. Now, there's a season, absolutely, when you're just coming out of this situation where you're just can't even get out of bed sometimes, right? It's really, really impacted you physically, emotionally, everything. And that's one of the things that's so devastating about spiritual abuse is it impacts so many things. It is literally life-altering sometimes of every domain that it touches. But that was really pivotal for me of just setting an expectation that it is okay if there are certain domains that aren't going well. I'm not doing something wrong. I am not behind. I am not healing fast enough. If I have certain domains that are challenging right now. It is okay when there are domains that are going really well to celebrate that and to be excited about that and to let those things be going as well as they are. And not have this like, Oh, when is the next shoe going to drop? And when is this going to start going bad?

Which is something that I do a lot. I was like, Well, when is this thing going to end up coming crashing down? But being very present in that circumstance, and that's part of trauma recovery, too, is presence and being able to be present in our circumstances. When something is going well, being present in this circumstance and just enjoying what's going on right here and not focus so much. It is often a trauma response that we focus so much on what could happen and what is going to go wrong and who is going to take this from me and how is God going to punish me for being happy right now at this moment. I would say that that's what that life on the other side looks like and setting this reasonable expectation that this thing that happened to us. It's like if we break our leg and we have to go, we got to get a cast, and then After we heal with the cast, we go get physical therapy. But then every five years, 10 years down the road, every time it rains, the leg hurts. Does that mean that we can't still go running?

Does that mean that we can't play volleyball? Does that mean we can't play that we can't wear the clothes we want to wear. No, it just means that when it rains, it hurts and it does. I think trauma is like that. It's like when it flares up, it flares up. But that doesn't mean it's not flaring up, that we can't really have a great time and enjoy our lives and know, Yeah, it's going to come, and I can build the resources to navigate it when it does. Because we are altered. Trauma, this type of trauma is really intense. It changes our lives. It changes everything. We are different people often after this happens, but that doesn't mean we can't create the life that we want in the aftermath. Yeah.

Brian Lee
Thank you, Katherine. If people are looking for you, where can they find you online?

Katherine Spearing
My website is katherinspearing.com. And then Tears of Eden is on Instagram @tearsofedenofficial. And Tears of Eden website is tearsofeden.org. And for both my personal work with trauma recovery clients, and then also with Tears of Eden, we are making a shift to put more into our email list And so we're not quite as active. I am now, because of the book, a little more active on social media, but in general, we're more active on our email lists. And with the Tears of Eden email, you receive resources right to your inbox about spiritual abuse. So sign up and join us.

Brian Lee
All right. Everyone, go get your copy today of A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts wherever books are sold. We'll provide all those links in the show notes. Katherine, thank you again so much for being with us.

Katherine Spearing
Thanks so much, Brian. This was so fun. Always a joy to get to talk to you.

Brian Lee
Same. What a fun and insightful conversation. I always enjoy getting to talk to Katherine. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to follow her and say thanks for being on the show. You can find links and all the things in the show notes. Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically.

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And a special thank you to our listeners who make the show possible through their financial support. If you find the show valuable, consider donating today at brokeentobeloved.org/support or at the link in the show notes. This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and post-production by Lisa Carnegis.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness together. I'll see you next time.