Brainwash be gone. Welcome to our special holiday episode. Of course, the holidays can be a fraught time for basically anyone in our society for so many different reasons. But for those of us who've left high demand religions, there are even more potential minefields. In this episode, we're gonna both acknowledge some of the unique challenges that major holidays bring to people who understand our experience, and we're gonna focus on the upside of this season, which is it's our opportunity to use our newfound personal freedom and choice to create our lives with intention so that in the future, holidays aren't just obligations, but fun, celebrations of life, whatever that means for each of us.

In that way, it's such a beautiful opportunity.

I wanna start out by acknowledging the unique experience of our former Jehovah's Witness listeners. You know, for so many of these topics, we have a lot of commonalities, between those of us who have left different high control or high demand religions. And of course there are unique differences between each one.

A lot of times the overall message is the same when it comes to holiday celebrations. There really is a little bit of a split in that those of you who were Jehovah's Witnesses likely did not celebrate most holidays in the way that the general culture in the United States does or around the world, and those of us who are from other groups, ex evangelicals, ex-Mormons, ex Catholics, or other high control groups.

We had more of an experience where there was a holiday celebration tradition, but it was primarily based or entirely based on religious principles that we no longer practice or believe in.

So while I think that significantly changes the experience that you have based on what group you left, the things that we would do are pretty much the same. You know how you go from where you're at Then leaving and where you want to be in the future are really similar. So I think it still makes sense for us to talk about everybody's experience as a group, but I just wanna call that out because I am not a former Jehovah's Witness, and I don't fully understand your experience, um, other than what people have shared with me.

So I can not imagine exactly how challenging it would be to be from going from scratch to really creating something entirely new.

I know. I will say from my experience that when I left my former high control religion, I was a Catholic, it felt really strange because I was so used to the constant guilt and vigilance about having to be holy on holidays. You know, there was always a lot of guilt tripping in the variety of. Jesus is the reason for the season type stuff.

So a part of me never felt totally okay just loving the dumb Christmas movies, the flashing lights, the food, the getting dressed up for holiday parties, like that side of it we weren't supposed to, uh, enjoy to the degree that I always did. And you know, coming out of that, I felt a lot of relief realizing that wow.

This holiday has been totally unmoored from its religious principles for me in a really beautiful way, and eventually I actually relaxed into it and I've been having so much fun without guilt since that time. I really derive honestly, a ton of joy each year from basically decorating my house. Like I'm taking artistic direction from my inner 4-year-old. It's like, we need some more flashing lights over here and some more sparkly bows over there, and it's been really freeing.

I love not practicing the holy days of obligation or having a specific ritual that I have to. Carry out, but making new fun celebrations with myself and with my children.

If you think about it, rituals can actually be separated from religious practice. I used to think of them together, like the rituals that I do are religious in nature, and once I'm no longer religious, then I don't wanna do the rituals. I can't do the rituals. I'm no longer a part of the group that does these rituals.

And at some point I realized. That there was a certain nostalgia for some types of rituals, like the smell of incense or the lighting of candles. And it's actually a very natural experience as a human being to enjoy, uh, certain types of repeating traditions, things that feel familiar, things that comfort us, and we can actually still choose if we want to.

To have ritual in our lives, even though we understand that it's not religious or perhaps it is still spiritual or religious for you in some way, it's just not associated with a high control religion. But that was a really important distinction for me to understand that it's totally fine for me to say, you know, I'm lighting this candle when I do this certain thing simply because that feeds my human need.

For a certain amount of predictability and beauty and habit and ritual in a way that comforts me and for that reason alone.

So that might be one thing to consider as you are making your holiday choices from here on out. We don't have to be limited by a direct backlash to all of the things that we're rejecting. We can just choose totally. From scratch, choose a new I.

I know another major issue that comes up for those of us who've left high control religions is the question of whether to see your family or not to see your family. And for some of us, we don't have a choice because there's been a rupture and we're not invited. In some ways that might even be better than people who are kind of on the line where they could attend family celebrations, but there may be some element of pressure or um, just discomfort being in that environment.

You know, there are a lot of big mine fields, so for people who are making that decision, take really good care of yourself. Especially if you're in the first holidays after leaving a religion that controlled all of these aspects of your life. It can feel especially rough that first time, but I promise it definitely gets better and if you need to opt out from holiday.

For a year. Sometimes that's the best option if that feels good to you. But no matter what your transition looks like, there's a period of transition from an old way of life that doesn't work for you anymore. You've obviously made that choice for so many excellent reasons, and we talk about a lot of those reasons all the time on this podcast.

But even if you're very happy with your decision, it doesn't mean that the shift isn't really hard. It's just a big change. However, once you get through the shift. You'll be living an entirely new version of your life. So as you shift, it's really a great time to be deliberate about what are you shifting to Often we have so much focus on what we are getting away from or what we've lost or how it's going to be different, and that can distract us from.

Paying attention to what we're moving towards, where do we want to be? What could this celebration be? And so a little bit of intentionality goes a long way to making your new life exactly how you want it to be. What a beautiful opportunity. It's finally your choice. It's your choice if you want to celebrate or if you wanna take a pause away from holiday celebrations this year.

You have such a moment of chance to look at literally everything about how you've been doing things and reassess everything in a way that adults in our culture rarely actually do. Starting from scratch, and the first step in that would really be thinking what holidays or life moments do you even want to celebrate moving forward?

If there are holidays that you have enjoyed to some degree, or you think that you could enjoy, or even that you create out of nothing, or your own personal experience, you could decide to celebrate those.

There are some things that I celebrate that aren't even official holidays, but they're moments that are important to me personally. for example, every year on October 25th, I celebrate the anniversary of getting my law license, which was a really big, pivotal moment in my life and a big achievement, and I.

Love to do something, to just take a break and think about that accomplishment and what has happened since that time, that moment of change in my life, it matters to me and I like to celebrate it. And I feel the same way about the anniversary of my divorce going through and being finalized also. It's like, what a wonderful day.

Wow. February 22nd, my favorite holiday. And so for those joyful moments, I like to take time and commemorate them each year. and you may have things like that too. Things that remind you of happy memories or important moments in your life. And you can just decide, yeah, that's gonna be one of my main holidays.

I'm gonna take a day off of work and do what I'm gonna do on that day because that's a holiday in my world. You could celebrate your half birthday or your liberation day from your former religion, or make an annual pickleball tournament with your friends, or take your kids on a weekend camping trip.

Every year, you get to create and choose what those rhythms and rituals get to look like.

And at the same time, you can reassess all of the things that you've gotten in the habit of doing around holidays that maybe you just don't wanna do anymore. Like maybe you slipped into the habit of being involved in a certain gift exchange and you just don't wanna be a part of that anymore. Give yourself permission to just say, you know.

This is not something I wanna be involved in. I'm not available for this this year. Or maybe you became known for making 47 distinct and delicious and beautiful types of Christmas cookies each year, but you really weren't prioritizing taking care of yourself or resting or spending quality time with the people that you want to spend time with.

You can choose to take things like that off the list. Decide what's most important to you now in this era. We're always in that position of choice and creation, which I just think is so beautiful. That's my favorite, favorite thing about no longer being a member of a high demand religion,

is that we create our lives in each moment and we get to choose. And so I wish all of you very happy holidays this year, no matter what your circumstances.

To be free is such a beautiful and wonderful thing, even when it's challenging.

So some of our closing reflections on this topic are what part of holiday celebrations in the past did you love, and what parts did you not love? Are there ways that you can bring the things that you loved into your current life, even if they take a different form? What might that look like for you

This holiday season, what's at least one thing that you're going to do to take extra good care of yourself and make sure you're prioritizing yourself above everything else this season.

Who do you know who would appreciate having this podcast as part of her life? Send her a link to the show page at www.brainwashbegone.com.

Topics: Religious trauma, spiritual abuse, deconstruction, exmormon, exmo, exvangelical, recovering catholic, excatholic, former jehovah's witness, women's empowerment, feminism, leaving religion, self-worth, high demand religions, high control groups, high control religion, cult, cult recovery, brainwashed, high demand religion, spiritual trauma, church abuse