Sarah Herstich (00:40)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today's conversation is one that I've been looking forward to sharing for a while now. We're talking all about religious trauma as complex trauma. And I'm joined by someone who gets this work on such a deep level. Cassidy Duhadway is a trauma therapist, an EMDR approved trainer and author of Becoming Me, Unraveling and Healing the Sacred Wounds of Religious Trauma.

She specializes in complex trauma and emotional neglect, helping clients and therapists understand the deeper stories beneath symptoms like anxiety, overwhelm, and perfectionism. Cassidy is the CEO of Purple Sky Counseling in Utah, where she leads a team dedicated to deep, long-term healing. Her work focuses on reclaiming identity, rebuilding trust in the body, and making space for every part of the human experience. After we scheduled this interview, I ordered her book and I just devoured it.

the way that she writes about religious trauma, the attachment ruptures, the slow unraveling of everything you thought you knew, it hit me really hard in the best way.

ever felt like you had to shrink yourself to belong, if you've questioned whether the problem was always you, or if you're navigating what it means to step away from a faith that shaped your entire identity, This episode is for you.

Sarah Herstich (02:02)
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the complex trauma podcast. I am so excited today to have Cassidy do had a way on the podcast to talk all about religious trauma. So welcome to the podcast.

Cassidy (02:14)
Thanks, I'm so excited to be here.

Sarah Herstich (02:16)
Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time. I have to say, after we talked about you coming onto the podcast, I ordered your book and I just consumed it so quickly. It was incredible.

Cassidy (02:27)
my goodness. That's like, that's so lovely to hear. I appreciate that. Like always speaks. I don't know. I just always get the feel good when somebody tells me that.

Sarah Herstich (02:34)
Yeah, yeah. And so everyone who doesn't know, Cassidy just wrote a book recently called Becoming Me, where she talks all about her story and religious trauma and literally breaks down religious trauma as complex trauma just so beautifully and think that's where I'd love to focus our conversation around religious trauma as complex trauma, because in your book, I think one of the lines I underlined was religious trauma is complex trauma.

Cassidy (02:58)
Absolutely, if you grow up in a religion that has generational stories, you grow in it from the very beginning. And so there's no way to pull it apart from that attachment place. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (03:08)
Yeah, yeah,

absolutely. I think I told Cassie I was gonna read this little quote on page 37 if anyone has the book. That I think this just like sums it up. When I read this I was like, man, my experience is so much like this as well. So I saw myself in this so much and I think other people will too. Religious trauma isn't always loud. Sometimes it's quiet. Sometimes it sounds like obedience, like humility, like letting go. I had been conditioned over and over

to believe that when something didn't fit, the problem was me, my wants, my desires, my dreams.

Cassidy (03:37)
Yeah, that. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (03:38)
Yeah,

that, yeah. you dive in a little bit more about what religious trauma is, connection to complex trauma, let's dig into it.

Cassidy (03:48)
Yeah, so I mean, religious trauma is just a type of trauma. We talk about trauma all the time, right? Where it's anything that we experience that overwhelms our system at whatever developmental stage we are. Right? And so religious trauma is that within the religious framework that we are given, taught, or grow up in. So it can be spiritual, it can be abuse, it can be neglect, it can be trauma in general.

And it's using the language of spirituality, God, Heavenly Father, and or any of the tenants or the rules that come along with that. And how we perceive that as humans, right? I have to be worthy in order to earn love, or I have to be worthy in order to be approved to do these things within my church in order to belong in my family. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (04:23)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah,

what are some common signs or symptoms that might tell someone that this is part of their story? Like, what do you see? You speak a lot to it in the book in your own experience, but what kind of pops out to you in the here and now?

Cassidy (04:53)
I think it's just like, is this something that somebody struggles with? One is, would actually, honestly, I would just say if you grew up as in any religion that demanded you to not be yourself in any way, that would be a red flag to explore it a little bit. Any kind of thought patterns around, I have to repent, I have to talk to somebody about this, I have to make sure that like I'm worthy or righteous or...

so that I can make sure I'm better on the other side of things is probably one, is where I would look at it too. I live in Utah, so it's a huge part of just the culture of where I live and the community that I'm surrounded by. So really, when I think about Utah and looking at religious trauma, I would just pay attention to, like, do you have any sort of shame or pushback when somebody says something to you about something that isn't your norm?

Sarah Herstich (05:42)
Yeah, yeah, okay. How did you, part of your story, like how did you start to recognize that within yourself?

Cassidy (05:42)
is where I would start, yeah.

Honestly, it probably started, so I was a therapist before I was a trauma therapist, obviously, but and I didn't go into religious trauma until after I was a trauma therapist. So I didn't start with going into religious trauma and then learning about trauma. And so I think as I really

Sarah Herstich (05:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Cassidy (06:06)
fell into but hyper focused on becoming a trauma therapist. I think what really happened is I started to recognize that I learned about the development of our core belief systems and our cognitive schemas and how they develop and build into our sense of self and who we are. And then when I was sitting down with women, I started to hear my own story in all of their...

Sarah Herstich (06:10)
⁓

Cassidy (06:29)
beliefs and the things that we were processing with EMDR or trying to space for it. And was all about like, I have to, I have to do these things. I have to be perfect enough. have to be righteous enough in order to have love worth and belonging. It's really when I started to recognize it. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (06:42)
Mm.

Yeah,

yeah, and there's such a huge cost to that core self-belief, right? Yeah.

Cassidy (06:49)
Yes. Yep. Yep.

And really, and really, like, when you think about that, like those pieces,

The othering that happens because of those core beliefs, right? Whether you get shunned from the community, whether your family doesn't talk to you after you shift or hold a different belief system, whether you cut off parts of self for that reason because you can't be that person or do those things. That's really where I find that religious trauma really impacts us and really causes lots of harm. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (07:15)
Yeah, yeah,

absolutely, absolutely. I I think about folks who are in those kind of high demand religions and the, it's just the ripples, right? Like family systems and how beliefs related to the wider belief then impact the child and being able to, like you say, just feel inherently worthy or be able to express themselves or receive the support that they might need outside of just like,

Cassidy (07:38)
Mm.

Sarah Herstich (07:43)
Go pray about it for a simplified version. ⁓ And the impact developmentally that that has on people over time.

Cassidy (07:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, because belief systems start from the very beginning, right? Like we develop our belief systems around emotions between three and five years old, right? And so if not all the emotions are allowed and you don't receive the emotional support that you need in that age range, you're going to develop some sort of belief system, most likely from that emotional neglect that you experience.

Sarah Herstich (08:10)
When people start to question if they've been impacted or traumatized by the religion they grew up in or that they didn't have a choice to be a part of for a long time, what's that process like coming out of that? Or what was your experience in the divestment from that paradigm?

Cassidy (08:29)
well, I think a lot of people kind of go through that experience very differently. there's a lot of people that for most people, they hang onto their religious belief system because it's what they know and it's all they know. And they slowly, it's called like putting things on a shelf, right? They, they slowly are given information that doesn't quite fit their

their faith worldview and so they're like ⁓ don't know if I quite like that one I'm gonna put that on a shelf and not question it too much right and then I'm gonna put it on a shelf and I'm not gonna question it too much and and typically what happens is at some point the shelf breaks because there's too many things on the shelf and that's when people kind of crash right and it really is this overwhelming experience of like my whole identity is being challenged and my whole belief is like what do I do now so there's this

Sarah Herstich (09:02)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cassidy (09:16)
huge personal crash where you don't know who you are, you lose your identity. And if you grew up in a high demand religion that says you're out if you're not in, then the potential is you also lose your family, your community. I work in Utah, you can lose your business, right? So there's a lot of secondary issues that kind of come with that kind of unlearning, right?

Sarah Herstich (09:37)
Yeah.

Cassidy (09:37)
Some people go through where they actually deconstruct like all of their religious views. Some people do it really quickly. Some people do it really slowly. Some people, their shelf breaks and they put it back together and put everything back up there because they get to choose that, right? They get to choose, I want to belong in this community. In order to do that, I have to put those things back where they belong. And so it really is like a personal decision on how people do it and why they do it.

Sarah Herstich (10:02)
Yeah. I'm thinking about for many people, I know some of the clients that I work with and some personal experience about like the shame of that's there of like not belonging and feeling like you're the one that's wrong when you're kind of deconstructing or figuring out like what sits and what doesn't sit. And that feels really rooted in a lot of times the shame that's taught as part of the religion too.

Cassidy (10:11)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of times in high-division religions, you're actually taught psychological things like thought-stopping techniques so that you don't ask questions. You don't push back. Right. And so you have a lot of these patterns and behaviors that we use to help people sometimes, right? That when this happens, it just floods their system because they've been using these techniques to not step into the conversation and the othering and the shameful things that you've been taught. Right. Like,

in the LDS religion specifically, that's the one I grew up in, it talks about how like if you do these things then you are of the devil or you are evil, right? And one of those things is if you don't go to church or if you don't show up and you're not righteous enough then you are this or if you were righteous enough and now you aren't. So when that shifts the thing that I learned since I was a

primary kid, a little kiddo, was that, I am of the devil now, like I am evil. And so I have to come to terms with that whole new learning and all those things. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (11:22)
Yeah, yeah,

wow, yeah, that's so much to hold.

Cassidy (11:26)
Yeah. And the

other thing that happens a lot of times is there's in our religion specifically, there's an eternal consequence to that. Right. So not only am I ruining my life and my eternal salvation, but I'm ruining my family's eternal salvation. Right. And so there's this really long-term consequence that's kind of ingrained in our learning.

Sarah Herstich (11:46)
Mm-hmm. And so much pressure to stay and to not blow it all up, right? Yeah. Uh-huh. Absolutely. How do you support people in trauma therapy to kind of like grapple with that shame or even like name it sometimes?

Cassidy (11:52)
Yeah, that's so much pressure not to blow it all up because everything rides on that.

⁓ mean, honestly, the first, it's really slow. understanding your trauma story, it takes a lot of work to actually understand that what you've experienced is trauma, right? I can't tell you how many.

Sarah Herstich (12:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Cassidy (12:15)
clients, women, non-binary humans, men have told me I don't have religious trauma or I don't have trauma. And I'm like, okay, cool. Well, let's just have some conversation, right? Because it's something I have lots of training in and most people have no idea what that actually is, right? And so it's one of those really slow stories. One of the main things I do is I have to redefine words for people, right?

Sarah Herstich (12:23)
Right, let's just hang out. Yeah.

Cassidy (12:37)
So in like some of the words I redefine for clients that are LDS is like guilt and shame. Like I was taught that shame actually was just guilt and I just need to change my behavior. And that's not what guilt and shame are. So like when I say I am not good enough, that's shame, not guilt. And so I have to redefine some of the language and reteach those things. The other one would be selfish.

Right? I literally Google selfish and I'm like this selfish says you are only selfish if it is without regard of others. And I have never had a mother come into my office and struggle with being selfish. And they haven't been regarding their children for every choice they make. Right?

Sarah Herstich (13:18)
Yeah,

yeah.

Cassidy (13:19)
And

so we kind of reorient some of the baseline definitions. And then I do trauma work. So I do a ton of EMDR work. I do deep brain reorienting and I do a lot of somatic work, helping people make that transition and really do that deeper healing work. So it's long-term and it lasts as long as we can make it.

Sarah Herstich (13:38)
No, that feels so important because if that's all you know, this definition of like, we'll just change the thought, stop the behavior, when the roots are deep in this sense of I am nothing. I'm nothing, and I'm worthless, and I need to earn everything that I get. And if I'm bad, then I lose it. Yeah, that's some deep stuff that's wired in.

Cassidy (13:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, and the other part when it comes from a religion, most of us don't question it. It just is. And so it's one thing if you go to your business and your boss is telling you that like, you need to work harder in order to like be worthy. But if I grow up thinking that, then it's just my normal. And I don't even think that there's another option.

Sarah Herstich (14:20)
and then there's this sense of over-functioning and without the inherent sense of like, I can just be and be okay.

Cassidy (14:25)
Yep. And that's really why religious trauma is a very much a complex trauma and attachment trauma, right? Because it gets very much that underlying long-term small things over time that impacts your daily life in the future.

Sarah Herstich (14:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And that just makes me think, and I know you mentioned in the beginning of your book, and maybe later on, but in the beginning, that's on my mind, about the attachment ruptures that can happen based on some of these types of religions. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because I find it super interesting.

Cassidy (14:51)
Hmm.

Yeah, so sometimes in religion, can actually our religion and or our deity can actually become our attachment figure. And if that shifts and may become your attachment figure, then that's the you can have not only an attachment rupture with your family or your group system, but you can have an attachment rupture with your God and your Heavenly Father. And that is like, devastating. Yes, that. I really like mine. I've written my story and I've never really named it this way. But I think that moment for me when I was told, no, if you can't follow your

Sarah Herstich (15:18)
Yes, yeah.

Cassidy (15:26)
dreams you need to have babies was that was an attachment rupture.

Sarah Herstich (15:29)
That was it. Yeah.

That makes so much sense. And then all of the fallout that comes from that rupture and questioning of like, well, if I can't trust them, who can I trust and where do I turn and what do I do and how do I make sense of all of this if I don't have guiding light?

Cassidy (15:41)
Yes. Yes.

Yes.

And that you mentioned a really important piece. a lot of times that attachment piece, one of the things we're taught in religion is to outsource our trust or our sense, or like our internal sense of what's good and what's bad, right? Which is actually what keeps us safe in relationship to other humans and all the things. And so if I'm taught to say, you have to always pray about it. No, you have to ask this other person about it. No, this is what's right and wrong. And these are the only options.

And what that does is that outsources my internal knowing to somebody else. And so in order to reaccess my internal knowing, that is a really hard process that's part of this trauma healing and trauma recovery.

Sarah Herstich (16:25)
Yeah, absolutely, to reclaim that. And for some people, they may have never had it because this started so early. Yeah, so it's like rebuilding a new foundation to come back to.

Cassidy (16:31)
Yes, correct.

Yep. I just want to honor that. Like it's really scary sometimes because reclaiming that, re-experiencing that when you're not used to being in your body and coming back into your body to like find that internal knowing, right? It can be really scary.

Sarah Herstich (16:48)
Absolutely,

because the other side isn't promised anymore, right? Like I think that there's such containment that can happen in religion like, well, if I'm this way, then this, right? And it's like when you lose that, it's like, well, what am I even going for anymore?

Cassidy (17:03)
Right,

you lose like your purpose, you lose your drive. And the piece that I heard you say there is like a lot of times what we actually lose too is our, that knowing, like when we know something, it actually regulates our nervous system. Right? Uh-huh. So if I know the answer to something, my nervous system doesn't have to question anything or be any unknown. And so learning how to be an uncertainty and learning how to regulate your body and uncertainty.

Sarah Herstich (17:16)
yeah, you can exhale. Yeah.

Cassidy (17:29)
is a really interesting process.

Sarah Herstich (17:32)
Yeah, I know some of my clients and I, kind of joke about it of like, wouldn't it be nice to just like know that the big guy's got my back, right? And it's like, well, shit, we screwed that one up.

Cassidy (17:37)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ huh. Yeah,

I remember doing that during some of my beginnings of my deconstruction too, right? I'm like, Mom, will you please pray about this for me? Like somebody's got to know this answer for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to have to make this decision. It's so hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (17:50)
Yep, somebody's gotta have it. Please, someone give me the concrete facts. I need that to just like... It's so hard. It's so hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Cassidy (18:01)
But that's

also a really interesting piece of it though, because then I actually do take full responsibility for my life and my choices and my mistakes. Whereas in religion, often we kind of pass off responsibility a lot of times, which I think is causing a lot of harm in our communities. Then we're not helping our communities the way we can if it was an individual responsibility to be in our communities.

Sarah Herstich (18:23)
Mm-hmm.

And just kind of speaking of communities too, that feels like a big piece of this, of the significant loss of community when people are questioning their faith, their religion, all that they've relied on and feeling so othered, whether that's a forced othering or whether that's this internal, do I actually belong here?

Cassidy (18:43)
Yeah, yeah. And or like, do I look different? Am I different now? Right? Or like what in the LDS world, it's all about sleeves, right? So like, if I show up at my family's house in a tank top, they will know that I'm othered. Right? And then I mean, that's changed recently because of they're changing the garments. But like, there's a huge shift about if I look different enough, then they're going to judge me because I was taught to do that. And I know they were taught to do that.

Sarah Herstich (19:10)
yeah. And I also think of some of the, like, guess vicarious trauma that people can experience of, watching other people be othered in certain ways, you know, when people are coming out or sharing identities or whatever it is. And churches and communities are saying, like, no, no, you can't be a part of this. And people who are maybe a little bit more tuned in and watching, it's like, I better stay in line. Or I, too, am I going to lose it all. And it's just this, like, feedback loop that just keeps going and going.

Cassidy (19:37)
Yeah, absolutely.

Well, and that's one of the conversations that just come up with a lot of people I've worked with in Utah, right? Like they own a business or they're part of this group. And if they do that, they're going to lose. Like I have friends that have lost businesses because people quit going to them and they, they just have to close. and so there's a lot of impact that happens in on so many levels, I think. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (19:52)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And what about the other layers, of harm that you see maybe with family, like intergenerational stuff, like the different intersections of how this harm gets, I guess, perpetuated over time?

Cassidy (20:11)
so I think there's, well, so I think the internet has changed our world, right? So I think like, when I think generationally and I think about like what my parents were taught and what my grandparents were taught, I think there was so much little other information we knew. All we knew was this. And so as, as we're able to look online and we are able to learn from other communities and we see more, we have more choices and more options, right?

Sarah Herstich (20:15)
true.

Cassidy (20:34)
And so generationally, think for the last couple of generations, all of those things were just passed down as absolutes without any challenge for the most part. And now as we carry these absolutes and then we get challenged with this new information, we have to figure out what to do with it.

And that generational piece of it is really big, right? If you're in a system where it says women do this and men do this, right? Am I passing off this generational role system? Do I continue that because I'm choosing it or am I continuing it because that was given to me?

And that's really where I see it showing up now is in how we're defining these roles and how I mean, I work with a lot of adult women, how a lot of adult women are struggling in relationship because they have a belief system that says I am responsible for everyone around me, which means they're doing most of the

the emotional labor, right, the invisible labor, they're doing most of the childcare, and they may also have a job because our culture demands us to work

And then they come in and they're like, my husband's not supporting me. Like I have to ask him to take the trash out all the time. And there's this misnomer, miseducation about what being in a shared relationship looks like. And those conversations happen better outside of cisgender relationships. But even in all those relationships, learning how to have those conversations and learning how to do shared responsibility is a lot of work. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (21:56)
And it's like, you said earlier, rubbing up against what has been handed down and expectation and then reinforced.

Cassidy (22:01)
Yep.

And a lot of times like you'll go to your, you'll go to like your parents' house and they'll make small comments about that, right? Or you'll go to this other place and they'll make small comments about it. And so you're digging it from all kinds of different angles and things like that as well.

Sarah Herstich (22:08)
Mm-hmm.

What do you feel like the, well, I mean, I can think of a couple, but the hardest parts of people who are, you know, pulling away, acknowledging the harm that's been done through their religion, where the rest of their families or the majority of their families are kind of remaining steadfast in that religion. What are some things that people can kind of, I don't know, keep in mind as they're navigating that shifting and quite challenging dynamic?

Cassidy (22:39)
One of the hardest things that I think happens is the person that is going through the faith struggle or the deconstruction wants to still be seen and heard. And the community that stays, the family that stays in the system have very little to no desire to see the person in the new space.

because it conflicts with their internal sense of self, right? Because they've been taught this religion is who I am. So there's no ability to separate it, which means when you go to your family's house, they still pray and they still do all the family rituals and the religious rituals and they expect you to conform to them.

Sarah Herstich (23:16)
Mm.

Cassidy (23:16)
instead of having conversation around, we're gonna keep doing it this way, what works best for you? Do you wanna come 10 minutes late? Like, we're okay with us saying the prayer without you. Like, how do we restructure the family system to allow all of the belief systems to belong? Right? And I don't think that that very rarely happens. And you can see family systems and like,

Sarah Herstich (23:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Cassidy (23:41)
Thanksgiving and holidays, right? They're going to value those experiences and the person that's gone through the deconstruction or is 10 years out, what they want isn't even on the table. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (23:52)
Yeah, yeah.

I'm also thinking about how that would require some form of emotional intelligence that I think a lot of family systems that are part of this may not have, just given the structure in which they've developed in.

Cassidy (24:07)
Yeah, no, and I would agree with that. mean, the third pick of terms we would use is like really enmeshment, right? Lots of enmeshment. There's no separation between religion and self and your family. You are all kind of enmeshed in some of these situations.

Sarah Herstich (24:21)
and it's such a skill to be able to build a boundary for yourself to say, like, her crying in the corner over there because I'm not participating in the prayer, like, that is on her, right? Like, I'm going to remain in my integrity and do what I need to do for myself. Like, that takes a lot of work, I think.

Cassidy (24:31)
Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Well,

and specifically for women in high demand religions, that takes trauma work, truly, right? Because that kind of learning is I am responsible for others. I can't disappoint them. If I do anything that causes disappointment, I need to change my behavior to avoid that.

Sarah Herstich (24:43)
Yeah, for sure.

Yes.

Cassidy (24:55)
Right? So it's not a mesh around, I am responsible for their emotions. I'm responsible for their feelings. And so I have to walk on eggshells and do everything I can to do that. Nobody in my religion calls it walking on eggshells, but that's literally what happens. Right? I have to control and manage and put myself into a certain box in order to not let them feel uncomfortable. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (25:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, to keep the peace and kind of keep everyone,

keep everyone happy, right? Quote unquote happy. Yeah. No upsetness, no waves. Yep. Like no side eyes, just like Yes. We are all numb. Yes.

Cassidy (25:21)
huh. Yep. Yep. Yep. And there should be no upset in us. ⁓ huh. Yep. We're all numb.

I think in my book, I talk a little bit about that is like.

But what the emotional intelligence piece, that's one of the things that's paused, right? It's one of the things you don't develop when you grow up in a system like this. So emotional intelligence, decision-making, right? Teenage development, it just pauses. And so when somebody leaves and or goes through a faith transition or deconstruction, they get to start at that three to five year old space and that 12 to 18 year old space and go through the rest of their development.

Sarah Herstich (26:01)
yeah, absolutely. And that made me think too about the purity culture and body shame. And yeah, can we touch on that for a minute? Yes.

Cassidy (26:10)
Absolutely, absolutely.

I didn't, I did not talk, call it purity culture. There's a lot of things in this book that I didn't name with R of arthritic words, because I really wanted it to be something that somebody could consume and understand without going to grad school. But man, purity culture is so harmful.

Sarah Herstich (26:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Cassidy (26:29)
And

it changes our sense of self and who we are, not only how we look and think about our bodies, like how we interact in relationships, how we interact sexually, like so many ways. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (26:40)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I think back. I grew up Catholic. so, you know, the like a 15 years old wearing the what you call it rings, the yeah, the promise rings or whatever. And how early that like shame You're not allowed to to be a sexual being.

Cassidy (26:48)
province ring or that

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sarah Herstich (26:56)
And during

those times, like that time of things are normal, right? And to suppress and suppress and suppress, there is such an impact on people for the long term.

Cassidy (27:02)
Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. So I binge watch Secret Lives and Warming Lives because it just came out last weekend. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's LDS drama. So it's super fun,

Sarah Herstich (27:10)
Uh-huh. I saw it on your Instagram story. I wanna watch it just because I'm so interested.

Cassidy (27:18)
the ladies on that show do an incredible job about being extremely vulnerable about their real lives, right? and I hear a lot of the purity culture going up. Like there's so much shame in how they talk about sex. There's so much shame in how they talk about their relationships. Like.

most of the those couples that are on that show don't know how to have conversations about some of these things, right? And these are things that you are just basics and couples therapy like, we're going to talk about how do you communicate? How do you fight? How do you recover? How do you repair? What is your sexual identity like? Like, what do you like? What do you don't like? Like, nobody has ever taught so many of us to even know that we can have that question.

Sarah Herstich (27:48)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right.

Cassidy (27:58)
right?

And then there's the flip of for for some women and I'm sure men experience this in different ways but for women specifically if you're taught that you're you're not allowed to have sex you're not allowed to think sexual thoughts right you're not allowed to touch yourself masturbation is bad oh if you're married now please go have sex oh yep it causes so much rupture in their bodies and

Sarah Herstich (28:16)
Go have sex. Get to Yep.

Cassidy (28:24)
And for some people even pain and lots of fear and shame that takes a lot of time to work through and figure out.

Sarah Herstich (28:31)
Mm-hmm, yeah, and that disconnection from that, like, pleasure is also a possibility versus just, procreation.

Cassidy (28:37)
The purity culture piece of it is just, it's built into every part of it, right? And again, it starts from that very young age, right? And you're only allowed to do certain things and you're shamed if you're not and that kind of thing. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (28:45)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah,

the shame that kind of like underweaves all of this, right, and pulls it all together is just so huge. In your book, I know you talk a lot about like the grief, the grief of leaving, of deconstructing, of being shaken at your core. Can we talk about that a little bit? And I know you talk a little bit about like the collapse in the book as well. But yeah, the grief and holding that for yourself and getting support with it.

Cassidy (29:06)
Mm-hmm.

yeah, so like the first thing is a lot of the clients I work with don't know how to grieve, right? So, so if we're, if there's this emotional neglect that happens, in our culture, we have very few rituals around grieving and the ones we have are fast and quick and over and then we're supposed to be fine.

And so I tend to teach all my clients what grieving is and how to grieve and what it looks like. And here's lots of different ways to grieve, right? Because I find that there's so many pieces of this that come up, right? Two things, one, when you realize what your story means to you and how it impacted you, there's a layer of grief there.

And then when you realize where your life is now and where it could have been if you had different choice, there's a different layer of grief that comes with that. I work with a lot of married women that are like, I don't think I would have married this person, right? They're in their 40s, 50s. They got married at the age of 18. They're already done with babies. They're empty nesters. And now they're in this relationship with their partner. And they're like, I don't know if I would have married them.

if I had knew more. And so we have to not only grieve that, we then have to heal lots of things and eventually make choices. And you don't have to change anything, you can still choose to be in the same relationship. But that's one of the things that stops a lot of trauma work, is that fear of the choice that I have to make today, instead of knowing I can make the choice in the future when it's time.

But the grief of that and the knowing of that can really prevent people from walking in the direction they want to walk.

Sarah Herstich (30:47)
yeah. And so you're an EMDR Can you talk a little bit about EMDR with religious trauma? mean, EMDR is a wonderful tool that we have, right? somatic work, and it's doing the exact opposite of what so many of us were trained to do, and disconnect from ourselves and our bodies and all of that. Yeah.

Cassidy (31:02)
Right, disconnect, not have fields, do all the things, yeah, work harder.

Sarah Herstich (31:06)
Uh-huh,

yeah, but when you're talking about EMDR with folks who are identifying religious trauma as being part of their story, like what do you share for just like an underscore of hope of how EMDR might be able to support them?

Cassidy (31:18)
sometimes I share a little bit about my story and I did this when I presented to Andrea two years ago about religious trauma. But I talk about how like, when I first left, it was over 20 years ago, and when I first left and I started doing my hair, I wanted to be seen, I wanted to be heard, I wanted to be loud, I wanted to use my voice. But when I first started doing it, it was very much...

so intense and so like trauma response, like I'm doing it because of this. And then over my journey, what I have found is I've learned how to be soft and listen just as much I am loud and use my voice. And now when I do my hair and do other things, right, it's more about creating versus trauma response. And so it's the same behavior, but it's a different why.

Sarah Herstich (31:40)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yeah.

Cassidy (32:00)
And how much more true that is to me and how much more I love it versus then I loved it, but it was always like it came with like that layer of shame that was always embedded in that kind of thing. So I'll share that story sometimes. The other thing I'll often just say is like, you have a belief system that says I have to strive or something in order to have love, worth or belonging. What if you actually just believed I have worth regardless?

Sarah Herstich (32:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cassidy (32:27)
right or I belong period if you can

hold that and you walk into the same situation how would you react in a situation with this belief versus the one you carry now right and we explore what that looks like because those are very different experiences

Sarah Herstich (32:43)
Yeah,

absolutely. If you had, I guess, one message to send to folks, to women particularly out in the world who identify with this, what would the message be?

Cassidy (32:55)
I think my message would be is like, learning how to be you is powerful. It gives you the opportunity to make choices and to be the person that you want to be, regardless of the story and the religion and the faith systems that you were given.

And you can choose into those or out of those for whatever reason you do. But it's a choice and it's not a have to. And that just is really cool. So,

Sarah Herstich (33:20)
there

anything else that you feel like you wanna add about your work or your book?

Cassidy (33:24)
there? I don't know. I do lots of things. love what I do.

Sarah Herstich (33:24)
⁓ You

do lots of things, lots of amazing things, lots of amazing things. There's lots of opportunities to learn from Cassidy.

Cassidy (33:35)
Yeah, that,

Probably when it comes to religious trauma in my book, one of the things that I have learned is to not be afraid to use your language, right? To speak from your culture. And because not everybody understands it, and I do. And so when you speak from your story and your culture, that's where you make more impact.

Sarah Herstich (33:54)
Mm-hmm.

Cassidy (33:54)
Right? Like right before this interview, I have a couple of therapists that work for me. And one of the therapists called me and said, I have a new client today. Guess what they told me? They said, they followed you online because they, they're struggling with their, with the LDS faith. Right? So they have found me and they bought your book and they read your book and they just had to come do therapy. And they said your book was the reason they wanted to do therapy and they're ready to make changes. And I'm like, that is so cool. Right? Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (34:13)
Wow.

⁓ Yeah, yeah,

that's just like, that's like the why, right? Yeah, yeah. Yep, so incredible, so incredible. Well, tell everyone where they can find you online, on Instagram, on all the places. Yeah.

Cassidy (34:23)
Right? huh. Yep. So I think it's just that.

I know all the things, absolutely.

So the thing that I also wanted to say is like, my goal is to help people become better people, however they want to show up. And I do that for therapists, I do that for individuals. I am neuro affirming all the way. And if you're thinking about your itty-bitty brain or whatever it is, like I'm here for it. You can find me at cassidydohadway.com. And that's basically my own individual page and my book is on there.

and the trainings I offer as well as consultations for therapists. do EMDR consultations and trainings, and then I do trauma consultations, and then I do a bunch of other trainings and speaking. Then I own Purple Sky Counseling, and I have five offices in Utah. It is so fun. I have such incredible therapists. So if you're looking for a therapist in Utah, they're all extremely skilled in trauma work.

Sarah Herstich (35:13)
incredible. Wow.

Cassidy (35:22)
neuroaffirming, core affirming and understand the LDS faith and religious trauma and we have LDS and non-LDS and never LDS therapists if that's important to you as well. So yeah that's where you can find and Instagram that's where we met yeah yeah it does it was pre-COVID potentially.

Sarah Herstich (35:33)
So cool.

Instagram, yes, that's where we met a million years ago, it feels like.

It sure was, yeah.

Cassidy (35:44)
That literally was a million years ago at this point. Therapy

Sarah Herstich (35:46)
It was,

Cassidy (35:47)
with Cassidy is who I am on Instagram and I'm on other things too, but I really only ever show up there. So if you find me somewhere else, it's not the same. No. Yeah.

Sarah Herstich (35:55)
Yeah, it's not the same, not the same vibe. Yeah.

Yeah, but I would really encourage everyone to go out and grab Becoming Me. Go out, I mean, go to the internet and buy it because it's wonderful and there's so many tools and reflections in it. And I think it's really just a beautiful book for folks who can identify with this. And it might just kind of like rock your world and be like, shit, she's saying the things that I never knew existed, but feel them very deeply.

Cassidy (36:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I am, I wrote it in a very non pathologizing way. I tried really hard not to use therapy words. And I also have had lots of people tell me, you know, I didn't grow up in that kind of religion. And this feels like patriarchy to me. This feels like women's experience in this system to me. And this feels like women's experience in this system to me. And so I think for sure the first half of the chapter, I think is does a really good job of laying some of those things out.

Sarah Herstich (36:46)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. you so much for taking the time to come on the show. but of course, of course. Okay, everybody, I'm going to link to everything in the show notes for Cassidy and where you can find her and follow her by the book, all of the things, and we'll be back next week for another episode. So we'll talk to you

Cassidy (36:52)
so glad to be here. Thank you so much, Sarah.