Episode 21
Gut Instinct, My Spiritual Journey Part 1
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Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So Daylight Savings time just happened yesterday. And if you're listening to this on Tuesday, I usually record the week before so it was a week ago. I'm sure you're sick of hearing everybody talk about it. But man, is it disorienting. I feel like it's more disorienting than normal this year, because I don't, well, I don't know why. Except it just feels like my body is freaking out. I told my operations manager the other day that I don't even know what time it is anymore. Time is completely relative. I have been wide awake for like three days straight, I'll just lay in bed, just with my eyes just open with this internal buzzing. I mean, I'm sure it's adrenaline or something. But I think it's gonna take me a couple of weeks to adapt to this. But that's a long way of saying that my time, my days, are really confused right now.
I have been putting off this episode a little bit and procrastinating on it. I see procrastination as a message. You know, I don't like to really even call it procrastination. But usually when I'm procrastinating it means a couple things. I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed. And so I'm frozen, or the work is not yet complete. And that's where, you know, my mentor will always say, you know, you make a move and the universe makes a move. And it's that 50/50 co creative process where you're waiting for that final piece, that final answer, just pulling everything together. And it's not a view, it's not something that you have to go out and seek. It's something that really needs to come to you from, I guess the ether. I see the creative process, kind of like a birth process where you're culminating, you're culminating. It's growing, it's growing, it's expanding, it's expanding until it's time you know, it's time to give birth to it.
And so I kind of had a loose topic plan for this episode. But it just wasn't quite feeling right. And sometimes during the creative process, if something doesn't feel right, or you don't feel it, sometimes you just do it anyways and it ends up being some of your best work. I swear the times when I feel the most uninspired about a topic and I do it anyways, that's the time when you guys have the best feedback from me you're like, “this was the most amazing episode” or “this was the most amazing thing.” And I was like really wow, again, and again, I'm showing evidence of that creative process. Like it's just all about trust.
But there's some times deep down when you are procrastinating because it's just not right. And it's not just that the work is not complete, just something doesn't feel quite right. It's like putting a shoe on the wrong foot. It doesn't feel like the right time, or something's not aligning, and it's hard to put my finger on or really explain but I'm sure you felt that to where sometimes it's just about waiting. Sometimes it's just about being patient. Sometimes it's just about surrendering. But sometimes there's something that's just not quite right. And I kept feeling like the topic every time I sat down to really outline it, I just kept hitting a wall, hitting a wall, hitting a wall. And I finally came to the point where I was like, “Okay, God, you have a topic in mind, and I don't know what it is. So please slap me in the face with it. Because like I just I need to get this done by the deadline.” So sorry, Kayla. I know this is coming in quite, quite just in the nick of time. For everyone listening. Kayla is my amazing podcast producer.
And so yesterday, I hop on Instagram stories and we're doing that fun q&a box where it's like true or false. And you guys submit things. And then I have to say true or false. And one of you submitted a true or false that said, you used to be a Christian and now your beliefs are more New Age. And so I went on to say false and then I said I would have thought this about myself five years ago when I was driven by fear and mental inflexibility. But I used to be hypnotized and brainwashed. But now I can finally see deep nourishment, deep surrender and trust has allowed me to see truth with a capital T. It is inescapable which is why so many Christian women in the pro metabolic space are having a really hard time healing their bodies and subconscious minds are telling them something very different than their conscious programming is and they are afraid of expanding. So it feels like internal chaos.
I am closer to God and understand him more than I ever have in my life. I talk about this more in my podcast. And as a listener, you probably, if you've listened to this whole season, you know that I have woven these themes throughout but so many of you, the overwhelming response of you said, Please, can you share more about your spiritual journey? I'm someone that's struggling with this exact thing. And I really want to hear more about this. And it brought to my mind how I think it's almost two years ago now. It's in my legalism highlight, if you're on Instagram, how I one day off the cuff I had not really talked about my spiritual beliefs or anything like that. But off the cuff, I don't know what it was, it was a fit of rage. I went off in my stories about legalism in the church. And I haven't rewatched it since because it's really hard to be vulnerable. And then also watch your vulnerability. Sometimes it's like so cringy. But I went back and reviewed it today, because there was never a response on my social media on my Instagram quite like when I did that story, that story spread like wildfire, it got tens of thousands of views. Women were sharing it across all platforms. And that was the highest amount of impressions we had ever gotten that day, I think it was over 2 million. And even though I probably wouldn't say things the way that I did back then I've changed and grown a lot since then, the message still rings true. But because you requested and because I'm here for you. Let's dive into this more today.
Taking God Out of the Box
So this episode is going to be kind of about trusting your gut and a little bit more personal about my own spiritual journey coming from a really conservative Christian upbringing. And where I've landed, now, it won't be everyone's cup of tea, you won't always all agree with me. And there are probably going to be things that really trigger you along the way, or really forced you to expand your mind and grow a little bit. And that's good. You know, I've never been afraid or shy to trigger people. It doesn't offend me. So many of you have admitted I've triggered you at some point along the way. But I see that I was good, right? Like when we look at trigger points as tender spots that we have to work on or wrestle with and sort out, I kind of think about it as like when your headphones, your corded headphones get tied in a knot, you have to kind of work them out, you can't pull them tighter, you have to kind of gently work out the knots.
And so when we get triggered, instead of reacting and shutting something down, that's our fear, we really should face it. We should see why we have a tender point there. Why are we hitting something there? Why is there a wall there? Why is there a block there? Is that block for our own good? Or is it something that we created to protect ourselves at one point that really is no longer serving us, it's actually almost acting as a wall to keep us from energetically expanding. And I know some people that wrestle with their faith, like sometimes it's called deconstructing. I've never really thought that that term was a great descriptor for what this process was, for me, I look at it almost as if you are a puzzle like the middle of a puzzle. And all of the edges still have puzzle pieces to go, you have like a kind of a small image. And you're kind of stuck there. And as you start to expand your mind and you take God out of a box, you're now able to add more and more puzzle pieces and see more and more of the big picture and learn who God is.
Sometimes what you start to recognize is that the God that you put in a box was actually a God of your own making, an alter to yourself, that you were actually worshipping a false idol of your own making really have something that your brain created, keeping it small because of your own fear, or maybe your own patterns. I think of it as you know, when you look throughout the Bible, there's so many times where God warns that like I am the one true God, and only worship me not worship idols. And yet again, and again, you see people because of their own patterns that they're stuck in or generational things that have been passed down to them, they run back to their idols. Like I think of when the Israelites are in the desert. And Moses goes up to the mountain to meet God, and he comes back and they're worshipping their golden calf. A lot of us have a golden calf because of our own fear and our own programming and our own brainwashing and we don't even realize it. And so to me, my spiritual journey is not a deconstruction. It's a shedding of scales from my eyes. I finally was able to enter the temple and worship at the altar of the one true God and so my experience probably won't resonate with everyone's. And that's cool because it's mine and my experience, I'm really choosing to be vulnerable and share with you today. And if you don't resonate with it, or you don't want to hear it, just turn it off.
This episode is really for the women who are feeling the same thing deep down that I once did. And they need someone to put a story or words to their feelings, to those kind of deep, dark crevices and shadows that they're really afraid to face. I know better than anyone that dealing with what feels like doubt can be incredibly isolating, and can cause a lot of internal conflict and chaos. There's shame there, there's guilt there. There's fear there. And there are a lot of Christian women out there who are terrified, because as they've nourished themselves at a cell level as they've started to restore their metabolisms, and their energy has shifted, no matter if they believe that this is what has happened or not, doesn't matter. It is what has happened. Their bodies and their subconscious minds, which make up 99% of their brains activity, right, are actively butting up against their conscious mind –- that 1% of them that is programmed to believe a certain way to think a certain way to see things from a specific perspective, to repeat the same talking points over and over without thinking about what they're saying on a deep, deep level, to make sure that they really believe those words, marrow deep, bone deep. And so a lot of women are wrestling with this, whether they realize it or don't realize it, whether they're conscious of it or not yet, but they are so afraid to expand and to explore the almost taboo in a sense. They have locked God in a box and therefore locked themselves in a box. And we will explore what this really means soon.
So it feels like absolute chaos. Think about trying to fit yourself in a box that you can't fit in. The box wants to explode and you're constantly jamming up against edges of the box, you feel suffocated and you cannot breathe. And this is because God is inviting you to expand and you are ignoring the call, you are putting your fingers in your ears and saying, oh, la la la la la la la, I can't hear you. And I guess to really understand why I'm so passionate about this topic, I have to go back to the beginning a little bit more about who I am.
Back to the Beginning
So for those of you that don't know, I was homeschooled my whole life, I only went to first grade. And every other year of my schooling was done at home. My mother was a former public school teacher. And so she was really passionate about education. And so she chose a more classical style of education. For those of you that don't know what this is, you know, it's like really encouraging your children to play musical instruments. So I started playing piano at six years old. I took things like Latin in seventh and eighth grade so that I would understand language better. I was encouraged to study apologetics and theology, and debate and theory at a young age of 13, 14. And I was able to start college very young at 15, 16. Safe to say I grew up around a lot of homeschoolers actually, all of my friends or most of my friends or homeschoolers. I could probably do a whole episode on homeschooling, if you want at least my experience with homeschooling. Things I think I learned in homeschooling that I feel like our life skills that I'm so appreciative of now, because this was not an education of my choice. This was my mom making a lot of sacrifices to make it happen. My father making a lot of sacrifices to make this happen. And as an adult, I now really, truly see how fortunate I was to have that.
But while it was happening, I was just a kid, right? Like, I was a kid that wanted to do things that other kids wanted to do. And I felt kind of weird. And you know, just like with anything, there's weird people and there's normal people, but I guess really all of us are just weird. We're just different layers and levels of weird, but I did grow up a lot around a lot of homeschoolers. But I also grew up in the evangelical space. So think like Calvary Chapels typical mega church, you know, starts with a concert and with an emotional sales pitch, an altar call maybe to put the cherry on the top of it really got to get people emotionally moving with the music and then just bring it to a crescendo throughout. I was really involved in the church to the point where people would recognize me on the street for years, even after I left which made for some really awkward conversations. I'm not gonna lie. So that is what I really grew up in.
But in high school, I started to attend a Calvinist church or excuse me, they have rebranded now as a Reformed Church, Reformed theology. And so I don't do things half assed, like I never have, I'm sure you if you've been a longtime follower, you know this at this point, like I have not a half assed individual, I have to go 185%. Like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right. So safe to say that when I realized that there's no doing life, right, it really like it really threw a wrench into my whole life existence. So I read the Bible every year from when I was like 11 years old. I'm trying to really truly understand what these adults and these people are saying because, I think even at a young age, I recognized the amount of hypocrisy and baloney and I was really confused. I think I was just like, okay, they're saying this, but they're doing this, okay, what's the answer? Because that's how my analytical mind is working. I'm like, well you're saying this? And you're doing this? So like, where's the answer? What is the right way to do it?
And then when I started to get really involved in this church that had a really different theology, I really wanted to understand it on a deeper level, because they were saying, This is it. This is the true interpretation of the Bible. And I'm like, Oh, I found it, you know. And so I start reading Spurgeon, Churchill, Piper, Keller, Carson, Edwards, Hodge, MacArthur, like I am just eat, breathe, sleeping this stuff. So much so that I actually want to go to the seminary that these people are being taught out, because I really just want to understand it deeper, but I was told I wasn't allowed because I was a woman. Now that I know what I know about Calvin, and how Calvin was just a nut job and not spiritual or Christian at all, I feel really weird about this, like, I should have just looked that up a little bit, looked up his life story, it would have saved me a lot of time reading. But you know, you live and you learn.
I start going to Bible college for a few semesters, like in between my multiple jobs, you guys know how I approach health and wellness. That's not how I approach that's not just how I approach health and wellness, like I approach life that way. And this is why I think I have such severe nervous system dysfunction, like I have really had to explore why that is why I operate that way. Some parts of it is my personality, but some of it is definitely more reactive or learned patterns. And so over time, this has really shifted, but I still am who I am. So I will say that like I know that not all churches operate the same way. I understand that what I'm saying is like sometimes generalization and I want you guys to know that. It is pretty common for churches to operate in a very weird way. And I know people will say like, churches aren't perfect, and people aren't perfect. And you're never going to find a perfect church. I know all the talking points, but like, can you stop saying talking points and actually conversate about it and talk about why that might be?
I know that there are churches out there that do like feasts and singing and dancing and fun and encourage healthy sex and animal based traditional foods and operate as a true community that's just there to like, really do life together and get down into the trenches with each other. But that's not most churches. Can we be honest, most churches don't operate as a true community. But going back to my story, you know, I get really, really involved in this Calvinist church, and I'm embraced with loving arms, aka love bombing, and this kind of all consuming “acceptance,” and I put that in quotation marks. But the first red flags, which I now know are red flags, and I think this happens a lot to people because a lot of us don't have examples of good relationships or strong relationships. And so a lot I think a lot of people who grow up in abuse or grow up in emotionally immature families, or maybe grow up in really traumatic environments or have trauma done to them, it can really feel powerful to have a sense of belonging. And predators will always prey on that, they always will. Anyone that has predatory behavior, who is really emotionally unhealthy is going to attach to that and prey on it.
So over the course of the short time, at the church, I had already left my old church because something was not feeling right. It was like trying to put a shoe on my foot, like, every day I wake up in dread, every Sunday morning, I would wake up with just dread like, Okay, it's time to go to church, to drag myself out of bed. And although I was doing all these activities, and I was super involved, like I just felt so empty, I was serving to death. And you see this happen a lot in churches, where they encourage you to just serve your body into oblivion, instead of taking care of yourself or taking care of your health or mental health or physical health. They don't care. You just serve, serve, serve, serve your slave. I can see in hindsight now, and most of the stuff is I realized, in hindsight, as I was going through it, I didn't realize what was going on. It just was like, I feel so horrible all the time. I'm so burned out. I didn't even know I was burned out. I was just like, I'm so tired. And I would just constantly dread and constantly question everything I did. And so I think when I have felt this love and acceptance from this new church, I thought, oh my gosh, finally I found a home. I had the soul hunger. And I thought, Okay, this is the answer.
Christianity and the Health & Wellness World
And I always see parallels between religion, and especially Christianity, at least my experiences being really involved in Christianity. There's always so many parallels between the health and wellness space, and like dieting culture, like diet, culture, and the church. To me, it's just almost an identical parallel, where we operate at such extremes. We really attach ourselves to our identity, we have to really define things and constantly analyze everything we're doing. And so of course, I go from a pretty, I guess, I would say, pretty casual, evangelical side of things to just straight Reformed theology, this very extreme Calvinist, but you can only be gaslit so many times until you start to like feel you have to disassociate from your body. Because your mind is just like, No. You start questioning what you see, you start questioning your own mind. And that's the most dangerous thing is when you see evidence right in front of you, and you're being trained to ignore it, or discount it, or even worse, justify it. Or say, I'm just an idiot, I'm just a sinner, or I'm just this, I'm just that.
Once we start to ignore evidence that is in front of our face that we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our guts. And every time we ignore the evidence, we stuff it down, we stuff it down, right? We suck it down, even if we bring it up. And someone tries to gaslight us, over time, you question your own thoughts, your own mind, you don't even know what that is anymore. You lose your intuition completely. And I'm convinced it it causes an internal conflict because you deny your body. So many times your body's trying to tell you, trying to help you, trying to guide you. It's there for you, it's you that it almost causes the split, where you have to disconnect from your feelings, you have to disconnect from your sensitivity, you have to disconnect from your intuition. And you start operating almost as a robot. Like yeah, I don't know what I'm thinking like, I don't know what I'm saying like, Oh, yes, I don't know, like you just start to your brain starts to become washed.
Love Versus Talking Points
But if there's one thing about me that you have to know is I cannot ignore bad behavior. My gut, you know, I can look back now and say, my gut has always been strong. I just, I thank my creator for giving me the body that feels and is sensitive to what's going on around me even if my mind hasn't caught up yet. I thank God now, because I could go into so many things that happened to me in that short period of time that few years, but I won't do it for the sake of grace and forgiveness. But over my lifetime, I can say with absolute confidence with every cell in my being that some of the worst things I've ever seen be done to other people or be said to other people have been done by so called Christians. Some of the worst behavior comes out of the church, the most predatory, disgusting, inhumane, unempathetic, just lacking compassion, things come from people who claim to be Christians. And if you're listening and you're like, well don't air out the church’s dirty laundry, if not, what is the point? This stuff needs to be ripped out into the light and aired out and cleaned out and eradicated. Stop rewarding people for saying the right things instead of doing the right things. I mean, as long as it fits in the box, we're good, right? As long as they say their talking points were good.
And this is why some of these women that DM me will ask stupid questions like, Do you believe the gospel? But do you believe the gospel? Are you a Christ-centered Christian? Like if I told you Yes, Will you leave me alone? When are we going to acknowledge that we have split our body and soul? What you feel is right and what you're told is right are two completely different things in that world. And it often leads to not only just this internal chaos, but it also leads to people acting very differently when they're in community with each other, versus when they're alone. It's like when we speak of love, and love being at the center of everything, loving love being the answer to everything. And you know, saying things like “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” but how can we love others if we don't know how to love ourselves? How we love others is a direct reflection of how we view ourselves and how we love ourselves. If the inner judge is strong, then how are we going to love others? We're just going to constantly judge others and think that is love. You literally cannot love others, or even comprehend what that even means until you do it to yourself, until you know how to treat yourself with compassion, kindness, selflessness, believing the best, holding space for someone exactly where they're at, or holding space for yourself exactly where you’re at. That is true love.
You know, I think of the verse “we will be judged according to how we judge others.” And I always have thought, you know, this shows us Oh, I got it. Now how I judge others is exactly a reflection of how I see myself. So I'm judging myself constantly. And I'm going to bear the consequences of that action. And I, I always see woven throughout the whole scripture, how we pay for the consequences of our own actions. A lot of people think that God is like this overarching Punisher. And he's like, don't do this, do this, if you do, if you don't do this, oh, I'm gonna whack you. But that's not how he operates. He's just letting us know, like, Hey, this is what's best for you. And if you don't follow this, like, well, you're gonna have to bear the weight and consequences of that and your own body. But like, you do you, boo. You know, I got you your coverage and mercy.
And so it's interesting because no, I have to say, people in the evangelical space are really dysfunctional, like, I'm not gonna lie. But I have never, and I mean, never, I have worked with people that are in various levels of ill health. But I haven't never met a group of more sick or depressed or self repressed than I have in the Reformed Church. Just like the women specifically, like they're just so tired and haggard. They're in a religion of their own self loathing and shame, that they bear it on their faces, like you can just see it on them like they're just so weary. And, of course, second guessing everything you do, constantly being in a state of fight or flight, hypervigilant, like, oh, no, should I do this? Or should I do this? What does this mean to God? What does this mean? Constantly analyzing every little step you take, absolutely no self trust. Absolutely no belief in the Holy Spirit. Truly, they'll say that that is a checkmark in their theology, but absolutely no belief in it.
I see this from a body perspective, you know, like where thought goes, energy flows, whether we believe that or not, it's happening. So we might as well just get on board. But despising yourself and trying to change who God made you to be like fitting yourself, you know, you are square and you're trying to fit yourself into a round hole. It's like you're trying to change who God made you to be. Is it possible, the reason why you feel so horrible or you suffer from all these autoimmune issues, or all of these food sensitivities is because you are constantly attacking yourself, you're constantly attacking your very core? So your body's like, okay, I guess we're attacking ourselves. And the energy just flows in that direction. On a deeper level, you know, how miserable it is to obsess over constantly how lowly and pathetic you are, and how much of a dirty rotten sinner you are. It's such a self centeredness, a miserable self centeredness. And to me, it's spitting in the face of the Creator that made you exactly who you are. It's almost like a form of narcissism because God's like you're fearfully and wonderfully made. Like, I love you. I created you, hear me and my image and you're like, I just suck. I'm a miserable schmuck. It's so funny to me because some of the worst things that have been said to me on Instagram, like it's like a running joke now, where I'm going to click on their bio. And it's definitely going to say either Christian in the bio or it's going to be like “sinners saved by grace” or “redeemed” or “disgusting sinners saved by even an even greater savior.”
And it's just such an ultimate red flag to me, because why do you have to put Christian in your bio? Like, why can't you just be an incredible person full of vitality and have people just magnetized towards you. And instead you have to just shove things down people's throat or, you know, just for your information I identify as Christian. And to me again, this is just a reflection of the behavior, there needs to be some type of justification to the behavior deep down somewhere in their soul. They know their behavior sucks, but I would be an asshole too if I revolved my whole life around suffering. And I was that asshole. I didn't even realize that you could live in any other way. Because I was always around people that reveled in their suffering, like it almost made them more holy, or important or something.
The Breaking Point
There are many series of events that led to me get to a point where I was so shut down. I was dreading going to any type of church events. Sunday mornings I literally would dread going to church all weekend long. And I was also the sickest I ever had been. So this is coinciding with me at my sickest my gut was in turmoil. It was the height of my digestive issues. My health was falling apart. I had no clue why. And here I am. Just I think I'm really sick. I just finally realized, like, I think I'm really sick. I'm not well, and I physically was starting to not be able to serve in the church anymore. And I remember this ended up being a really big deal and multiple things that happened to me. And I just got to a point where I just, I just left, I just ghosted. I just it was like my body forced me to just leave.
At the time, I didn't know that was what I was doing, right? I was just like, you keep telling me that if I don't keep attending church, and I don't keep serving the church that I'm gonna fall away or become the prodigal son, or lose my connection with Christ. And I just like I'm telling you, I am miserable. I am suffering. I remember the straw that broke the camel's back was when this pastor that I was so close to their family, and helped him with everything, he just told me, “Well, yeah, like Charles Spurgeon was depressed during his life, too. That was just his burden to bear. And it still led him to do really great things.”
At that point, I just felt so unseen and so erased, that it had been such a death by 1000 cuts that that was just like the final cut, and the rope just broke. I don't know what happened. It was like all of the years of just erasing myself and faking my way through life and not stepping into who God really made me to be and breaking the chains that hold me back from that, being that person, all of the like bringing shit food to potlucks, and living the mediocre lives and kind of having this like checked out theology where it's like, I'm just not of this world, like I'm already saved. I'm elected and saying you're led by the Holy Spirit and being the exact opposite. Being around all these just really sick women that are just haggard and sad and miserable in their relationships in their marriages, and settling all of the discomfort around Christian men that are always lingering and always condescending and always talking about women's bodies and sex in such an uncomfortable and inappropriate way, all of this transactional feeling where everything felt like it had to be a transaction. Like I do this, I get this, I do this, I'll get this body this, this is what's going to happen. All of the gaslighting and the manipulation and the shame around our bodies and just purity culture in general. So disgusting. I think I just, I was like a branch that just snapped.
My mentor speaks to me all the time about how emotions are communications about what's going on on a deeper level, and rage is our boundaries being violated. And I felt like my explosion of rage was just every boundary, I didn't even understand my sense of self. So I didn't even understand boundaries, every boundary of my sense of self had been violated continuously over and over and over again. And the God within my cells snap, the energy just pushed into motion and I blasted out of that box. And I never ever, ever wanted to watch another one of those shitty concerts where the worship leader gets his 15 minutes of fame. And the car salesman gets up there and convinces you what a piece of shit you are, and then tickles your senses and you go on your merry way. Like I never wanted to deal with it again. I shed it like a skin and it disgusted me. It was like claustrophobia, like I just need to get out of here. All the gaslighting, the manipulation, the dogmatic thinking, the legalism, like my body just was like, nope.
But I'm gonna be honest with you. It didn't feel like that. At the time, it felt like chaos, it felt like my world was crashing down around me. And when I left the church, I lost all of my community, I lost my activities, my hobbies, my whole schedule changed. And then on top of it, it's like waking up from a nightmare, you're shocked, you're dazed, you're confused. You're just like wading through, like it just feels like there's been some type of chaos, some type of explosion, and then you're left just kind of picking up the rubble. It can really feel like your world is crashing down around you.
And to me, there's such a parallel here, because at this point, it's almost like information overload. You have so much, at least I did, I have so much theology, and so many other people's beliefs and so much scripture, just like pulsing around in my head. All these talking points that I'd heard over and over and over again, since I was a young girl that started when I was in Sunday school. It was just like, all of this is just like ruminating and ruminating and ruminating and you're like, oh my gosh, like this is, wow. It's really hard to make sense of. And I'll be honest, the first couple years was really tough because I wanted nothing to do with anything. I tried to go to church a couple of times. I tried different churches, and I just found myself just dreading it. Every Sunday morning, it took me probably like two or three years to start feeling okay on weekends, it was like my body was so used to when Friday started, start dreading Sunday, it was like this internal countdown. And now I know that my body was bracing to protect itself, it was like this energy is so horrible. It's taking you, you know, a week to recover from my body's trying to prepare me for the stress of being in that environment and being in a state of constant hyper vigilance.
But I have to tell you what the minute that I allowed myself to just say, You know what, you don't have to go to church if you don't want to, I finally stopped feeling guilty about it. And I can't remember at what point I did that. But I started doing something I really looked forward to on Sunday mornings, I would take myself out to breakfast, take myself out to coffee. It was just so incredibly peaceful to be like everybody's at church right now. And I am here, just like in peace, just sitting here and eating and enjoying my breakfast. And I'm sad to say that there was still a part of me that really felt ashamed and guilty for doing that. That a part of me worried for my soul. Like I was gonna be eternally damned for eating breakfast at a restaurant on a Sunday morning instead of being at church. And even though the Christian talking points are that you don't need a church to worship God. You don't need to go to church on Sundays to be a Christian. They don't really believe that. Let's be honest. There's such a judgment there from most Christians, I guess we can say we can call them the PS Pharisees.
And in hindsight, I can look back now and realize I was in such a severe state of nervous system dysregulation like it was an abusive relationship with people in church my whole life. I had been bopped around emotionally and spiritually. To me, it's almost like the military mentality where it's like you break people down and you build them back up in your image or what you need them to be. It's like when people are so fearful, they will accept almost any message that promises them to be out of that state. And it's almost like they lose their sensibilities or their senses, they lose common sense. And it really starts to shift your perspective and then your reality and because your thoughts shift energy and energy shifts reality, you really are creating a new reality for yourself.
But no matter how hurt I was, how angry, how bitter, how exhausted, how burned out, I didn't want to even think of the church. I didn't want to look at a Bible. I didn't want to hear anything from anyone. It was like I was so just like overstimulated I was done. Even through that time, I can look back now and just say, like, God carried me, I was in a life raft, free floating, no direction, no sense of self alone. And nobody I knew was going through what I was going through. And still, God was there in the trenches, in my various cells themselves, just sitting there with me and my humanity. He was not threatened by my rage. He was not threatened by my anger. He was not threatened by my bitterness. He was not threatened by my hurt, my pain, my tears, my tantrums, he just let me have it. You just let me have my moment. He let me have the space I needed. And he just held me there. And so I know so many of you want resources. You want to know how I got from there over a decade ago to now and I will continue the story and part two of this episode. I feel like this has gotten really long. And I will see you in Thursday's episode for part two of using our gut instincts, my spiritual journey will continue.
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