Fear and Trembling
What My Nervous System Learned From High Control Religion
“You doubt them, and soon they bark and hound you ‘til everything you say is just another bad about you.” -All That’s Known, Spring Awakening
At 35 years old, I got pregnant for the first time. My doctors told me to make sure I was drinking enough water, eating often enough, and of course, all of a sudden I had to pee 10,000 times per day. This is when I first realized something was really off in my relationship to my body. I realized that I didn’t recognize hunger until I was starving, I didn’t recognize thirst until hours after I should have been drinking, and so many other physical cues were going completely unrecognized. I knew I would need to find a way to correct this for myself and my baby.
I did some intuitive eating work, which helped with the food part and deconstructing food rules around my family’s culture growing up, but it still seemed like this was a deeper issue. It wasn’t until I began therapy with a somatic-based therapist that I realized how deep this problem was. I had, of course, done therapy before (as a therapist myself). I had built a lot of insight into myself over the years, but knowing and understanding emotions or experiences cognitively is not the same thing as feeling what is going on in your body.
Over the past two years, I have grown so much in this way. I recognize my body’s cues much sooner, I am able to do exercises to help regulate myself before I am feeling completely overwhelmed, and I am able to set better boundaries for myself when I realize something is not making me feel well. But, I know this healing process is going to take many years. The longer I do this work, the deeper I realize the dysregulation goes. And the more clearly I can see it, the more acutely I can feel myself moving through the stages of grief around what my childhood did to my body.
Losing Contact With My Body
Message: Your body’s impulses are inherently sinful.
Looking back, I can now see several ways my nervous system was systematically trained away from itself. One of the earliest messages we were taught was that even as a baby, humans are born sinful. This is called the Original Sin Doctrine. This theology believes that due to the fall of man through Adam and Eve (most specifically Eve), we are born with sin that separates us from God (Romans 5:12, Psalm 51:5). Being taught from the beginning that something inside of me was fundamentally wrong, my nervous system learned to treat my own impulses as suspicious.
I remember being told as a child that the fact babies cry is evidence of sin, never mind that babies don’t have the cognitive development to even make choices. After having my own sweet baby, I looked at him so small and helpless and couldn’t imagine believing his cries were evidence of his sin. His cries were his only way of communicating with me. How would a sinless baby even act? I guess Jesus didn’t ever tell Mary when he was hungry. I truly grieved the idea that people could look at babies this way after holding my own.
Once I started to be able to make my own choices, everything became framed as overcoming “the flesh.” The idea was that since Christ died for me, I better be grateful for that, by making sure I “draw close” to God by avoiding sin (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Romans 12:1, 2 Corinthians 10:5). Christ’s sacrifice became a constant moral obligation, and obedience became proof of that gratitude. There was consistent praise when I obeyed authority, did what the system trained me to do, and didn’t cause any conflict by advocating for my own needs. And when I would stand up for myself in the wake of emotional abuse, it was framed as anger that I needed to repent of, or I was accused of being unforgiving.
As I got older and started developing my own relationships, there was a consistent theme around being selfless (more emphasis was put on this due to my being a woman). Philippians 2:3-4, Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:25, Mark 10:43-45 There was so much language around being a servant, being “crucified with Christ” (Galations 2:20), and denying the “desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). For me, this led to a life where it felt virtuous to deny myself and put others first. This structure sets the stage for so much nervous system dysfunction in people. At minimum, it creates a struggle to learn to take care of yourself and you learn that selflessness is self-denial. At worst, it grooms you to be taken advantage of by bad actors who will weaponize this to control and coerce. Unfortunately, there were many men in my life who took advantage of my “selfless” nature.
The consistent hypervigilance around avoiding sin slowly pulled me further and further away from my body’s wisdom. Emotions were so often framed as the Devil tempting me, that I learned to distrust them instead of listening to them. Mental health care was never presented as an option. If I was struggling, the answer was more prayer, more repentance, or stronger faith.
When I finally entered therapy as an adult, I began to understand how much had gone untreated for so many years. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder stemming from C-PTSD and years of untreated ADHD. Years of emotional abuse from different people, combined with the constant message that something was wrong with me, created a deep disconnection from my own internal signals. Sadly, I did not fully recognize the extent of that disconnection for 35 years of my life. I wish I had received treatment much earlier, but that treatment may have been less than effective within a belief system that believes “God doesn’t make mistakes,” and any imperfections were ultimately a result of my own sinful nature or “the fall of humanity.”
Learning That My Thoughts Were Dangerous
Message: Your thoughts have the power to bring eternal damnation.
One of the earliest lightbulb moments in my training as a therapist was learning DBT skills around mindfulness and having a nonjudgmental stance regarding thoughts. I learned that thoughts happen randomly, and they don’t all have deep meanings attached. Sometimes it’s just a repeat of something you’ve heard, a statement someone else has told you about yourself, sometimes thoughts come from an emotion attempting to communicate something to you, and sometimes they are truly just word connections. I often tell my clients that our brains are simply random thought generators. The more mindful we become, the more we can hold on to the thoughts that are helpful and let go of the rest. This realization was incredibly freeing.
Growing up, thought policing was a prominent source of hypervigilance. We are taught to “take captive every thought” 2 Corinthians 10:5 and that we should only think of things that are true, noble, and right (Philippians 4:8). Of course, the church would determine the definitions of such things. Ultimately, thoughts are judged as if you had actually acted on them. For example, Matthew 5:28 says that if you look at someone lustfully, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart.
The consequences for not being able to control your thoughts adequately were not just moral. We were taught that unbelief or unrepentant sin could lead to eternal punishment. Teachings and verses about hell and “falling away” were often used to scare people into policing their minds to avoid any type of doubt or critical thinking. This led countless children to lie awake at night reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over out of fear they hadn’t done it right, or anxiety that they didn’t believe hard enough, fearing it would leave them burning in eternal torment. Many of these children were constantly afraid their family had been raptured, and they were left behind when they couldn’t find their family members or people left clothes on the floor. April Ajoy also writes in her book Star Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith that there was a period of time where her brother would say “I think” at the end of every sentence because he was afraid of lying accidentally and then dying of unrepentant sin. These are just a few examples of the ways this type of thought policing can feel even more detrimental for children who have no reason to think about the end of life this often.
Concerns related to thoughts shaping moral destiny surrounded me growing up. This was a popular quote I remember being used to create buy-in around thought policing. It is often cited as a Chinese Proverb, but it seems the original author is unknown.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
When thoughts are framed this way, the inner world stops feeling private or neutral and instead becomes something that must be constantly monitored. The human brain produces thousands of thoughts every day, many of them automatic and outside of conscious control. When children are taught that certain thoughts are sinful or dangerous, it can create a state of chronic internal vigilance. At minimum, this leads to excessive self-judgment and thought policing. Instead of letting thoughts pass naturally, the mind becomes preoccupied with scanning for the wrong ones, judging them, and trying to suppress them. Thought policing often creates a forbidden thought loop where you try to stop yourself from thinking about something, only to find that the thought shows up even more often. At worst, this type of self-monitoring can lead to an abandonment of accountability or an “I might as well” attitude about acting on thoughts that are perceived as sinful, since thoughts and actions are seen as morally equivalent anyway. I write more about that dynamic in another article about accountability. Ultimately, this kind of constant monitoring is associated with anxiety, rumination, and obsessive thinking patterns. When the brain learns to treat thoughts as threats, peace of mind is impossible. And when your mind is racing, your body pays the price.
Obedience and Belonging
Message: Safety comes from obedience.
Another message that shaped my nervous system growing up was the idea that obedience was the path to safety. Authority was framed as something established by God, and questioning that authority was often described as rebellion. Jezebel spirit, anyone? Children were taught to obey their parents. Church members were taught to submit to spiritual leadership. Women were often taught that submission was part of God’s design for relationships. The language varied, but the message was consistent. Obedience was virtuous. Questioning authority was characterized as being led astray by the devil. There are even some religious communities that will warn that you could be inviting demonic spirits in by dissenting from authority figures.
For a developing nervous system, this squashes the development of autonomy and personal identity. Approval and belonging come when only when you comply. Disagreement risks conflict and shame. Over time, the body learns which response feels safer. Even when something feels wrong internally, the instinct becomes to stay quiet, smooth things over, or defer to the authority figure in the room. Clinically, we call this fawning, a trauma response akin to fight, flight, or freeze.
In my own life, this meant that advocating for myself felt very unsafe. I experienced emotional abuse where I was told directly, “you are a child. Your opinion doesn’t matter.” I was shamed by male religious leaders for questioning anything about their teachings, for a small part of my back showing momentarily when lifting my arms up, and for getting divorced at only 21.
When I stood up for myself in cases where I was experiencing emotional abuse, family members and church members would pray for my anger. I was often told that emotionally abusive men really loved me and were just not able to show it in the best way. Over time this created a pattern of constant compliance. Whenever anyone was upset with me, my body would consistently react with tension and the urge to explain myself until the other person was no longer upset. What I once thought was simply being accommodating or “nice” was actually a nervous system response that had been reinforced for years. Appeasing others, especially male authority figures, felt safer than trusting my own instincts.
This dynamic also shaped how emotions were expressed. Anger was almost always framed as my sin, and conflict was framed as disunity. I remember expressing to our youth pastor’s wife growing up that I felt left out socially. I explained how there seemed to be a clique of girls that weren’t very welcoming or inviting, and it meant I often felt on the outside. Her response? “How dare you say that about those nice girls!” You better believe I never told her another thought or feeling I ever had.
In lieu of learning how to navigate disagreement in healthy ways, I learned to suppress emotions that might challenge authority or disrupt harmony. Important signals from the body were ignored, and this bled into all of my relationships, friendships and romantic. In an old memory box, I found a paper where all my 4th grade classmates wrote one sentence about me. Almost all of them say some version of, “she is a good friend” or “she loves others more than herself.” Seeing this written out next to names of kids I remember bullying me is heartbreaking. I grieve for the little girl that never knew that accountability was possible and continued to allow people to treat her this way into adulthood.
In the long run, when obedience becomes the primary path to safety, it robs you of the ability to develop your own identity and intuition around discernment. Authority itself starts to feel like proof that someone is trustworthy, making you more vulnerable to abuse by those who wish to take advantage. This creates environments where harmful behavior can go unchecked because speaking up carries the risk of losing belonging. Looking back now, I can see how deeply this pattern shaped my relationships and how long it has taken to rebuild trust in my own judgment. When you are trained to doubt your own instincts, your nervous system never fully relaxes. It stays on guard, constantly scanning for whether you are doing something wrong.
Shame and Control of the Body
Message: Your body is dangerous and must be controlled.
Probably the most damaging thing I learned growing up was that my body itself was something to be managed carefully. Sexual desire was framed as dangerous, and the body was often described as something that could easily lead you into sin if you were not vigilant enough. There was constant emphasis on modesty, purity, and guarding against temptation (mostly for women). The language often sounded like protection, but underneath it was a clear warning. Your body could cause harm. Your body could lead others into sin. Your body could separate you from God. While this is a long-standing Evangelical belief, these teachings became most extreme in the 90’s during the purity culture movement. Many Millennials still struggle to explain this purity culture experience to their Christian parents, as the parents that brought them there in the first place were seldom subject to these same teachings in adult classes and sermons.
For girls and women especially, this often meant taking responsibility not only for our own behavior but for the thoughts and actions of others (mostly men). Clothing choices were scrutinized to an extreme. The way you moved, sat, or bent over could be interpreted as tempting someone else. Men in the church would commonly approach women and explicitly rebuke them, or they would send women to be the messenger to pass these messages along. Entire sermons and youth group lessons were devoted to the idea that men were visually wired and that women needed to dress carefully so they would not cause their brothers in Christ to stumble. The message was subtle at times and explicit at others, but the effect was the same. I was taught to believe my body was something that needed to be monitored constantly, but I was also to hide it, not explore it.
Then, of course, the flip side of the obsession around women’s bodies and their effect on men was that if men didn’t want my body, I barely existed at all. The boys in the youth group had been indoctrinated with so much fear of women’s bodies that unless they were convinced (at that moment) that you were their future wife, you were invisible. Being friends with girls may be too tempting and was discouraged. The interesting dichotomy is that a culture so dedicated to stopping the objectification of women’s bodies was doing exactly that.
For kids and teenagers learning about their bodies for the first time, this creates a confusing relationship with physical sensation. Attraction, curiosity, and desire are normal parts of human development, but when those sensations are framed as moral danger, the body begins to associate natural activation with shame. Instead of learning to understand or integrate these signals, many people learn to suppress or disconnect from them. The body becomes something to manage rather than something to live inside. It took me so many years to realize my body was so much more than what it looked like and what my future husband would think of it. It’s my home for my entire life on this earth. That is so much bigger and more meaningful than what the church allowed me to believe, and I wish I had learned this so much sooner.
This type of messaging around sexuality and the controlling of bodies also reinforces the same pattern of external authority overriding internal experience. If your body responds to someone with attraction, that response is not treated as neutral information about yourself. It becomes something you are responsible for controlling or confessing. Over time, this creates tension around physicality and intimacy, because bodily signals are not to be trusted. They are treated as threats that must be contained. Then, this expectation suddenly flips when a woman marries a man. It is no wonder that so many Evangelical women end up with extreme sexual dysfunction when they get married. They are expected to perform sexually, to their husband’s expectations of course, after years of policing their bodies away from sexual impulses.
Looking back now, I can see how much energy went into monitoring my body instead of understanding it. What I thought was modesty or spiritual maturity was often just hypervigilance. My nervous system learned to pair bodily awareness with shame, which made it even harder to recognize or trust the signals coming from inside my own body.
When the Nervous System Finally Speaks
For most of my life, I never even stopped to think about the anxiety, the hypervigilance, or the constant second-guessing of myself. I knew I was sad a lot, lonely a lot. I knew I never wanted to be home, and eventually I knew that I didn’t want to go to church anymore. But, for so long, I believed that self-sacrifice was Godly. I was afraid to consider who I was, what my body might want, or what could be happening to me that might be wrong, as seeking my own satisfaction would be sinful. What I did not understand was that my nervous system could not heal under these conditions.
When I began somatic therapy, I started noticing how many reactions in my body were not random at all. My body would tighten, or I would feel nauseous, when I anticipated disappointing someone. I would feel jittery and nervous when I thought about speaking up for myself. Even small moments of conflict could trigger waves of anxiety that felt completely out of proportion to the situation. When I first began therapy, I attributed this to events going on in my life at the moment. In reality, they were signals from a nervous system that had spent years learning that safety depended on obedience, silence, and self-denial.
Pregnancy was one of the moments that forced me to pay closer attention. Suddenly, my body was not just mine. I had chosen to use my incredible body to sustain another life. When doctors asked whether I was eating regularly or drinking enough water, I realized how disconnected I had become from my own physical cues. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, stress. These signals had been easy to ignore for years because I had learned early on that my body was not something to trust. I believed food could make me fat, staying busy was a virtue, and stopping to take care of myself was selfish.
The longer I have done this work, the clearer it has become that my body was trained to be this way, and it was no accident. This is the systemic design of high-control religion. This type of nervous system dysfunction is meant to allow for greater control of the masses. At first, addressing this issue actually felt worse, because my nervous system was finally allowed to come out of survival mode and start to feel the damage that had been done. I began to realize that what I once interpreted as spiritual conviction or moral discipline was often my body responding to chronic pressure, fear, and shame.
Recognizing this has brought both grief and anger. I grieve for the younger versions of myself who believed something inside of me was fundamentally wrong or bad. I feel anger at the systems that teach children to distrust their bodies, their thoughts, and their instincts in the name of spiritual obedience. I grieve for my clients who come to me over and over with the same stories and the same symptoms and struggle to understand why their families still want them to raise their children this way.
The good news is there is also relief in understanding that my body was never broken. It was responding exactly as it had been trained to respond, and healing is possible as I have the power to take my body back and retrain it. This healing process has meant practicing listening to my body again, learning to recognize my own signals, and trusting that the instincts I was taught to suppress might actually be my most trustworthy guides in this lifetime. It has not been easy, but it has been incredibly worth it.