Welcome to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast.

I'm your host, certified religious transition and trauma recovery coach, Terry Hales.

I help people step out of the shadows of religious fear and shame and embrace their

authentic selves with love and empathy.

If you're ready to throw off the shackles of learned binary thinking and explore a more

nuanced approach to life, this is your playground.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast. I am really excited for us to

continue this conversation about parenting teenagers after leaving high demand religion.

The very first full episode I ever aired on this podcast was about recovering your identity

after high demand religion.

It is the biggest struggle that many of us have after living under religious authoritarian control

for years or even for our whole lives like I did. Because there's this infantilization

that happens in high control groups where we're told how to dress,

how to speak, how to interact with one another, what books we can read, what music we can listen to,

and what shows, if any, are appropriate. And it makes sense that after leaving that control,

we'd have a bit or a lot of an identity crisis. And during this identity

crisis, we may rebel against anything that reminds us of the religion. We might shuffle through

several different identities and try on several different groups. We may try new things. Our old self

would never do before. We may shift wildly from one way of being to another.

And it was all probably a little bit awkward. You might even still be in that awkward and scary stage,

but it's also totally exhilarating, right? You're free to make decisions for yourself,

but you have no idea what you're doing and who you're becoming.

...