Breaking the Spell of Religion and the Return to Self with Dr. Maurice Turmel

In this compelling episode of "Leaving the Church to Find God," host Melissa Whittington interviews Dr. Maurice Turmel, a distinguished psychologist, author, and speaker. Dr. Turmel shares his profound journey of deconstructing religious beliefs and the impact of religious trauma on mental health. With over 25 years of experience, Dr. Turmel has dedicated his career to helping individuals heal from trauma and discover their authentic selves.

Dr. Turmel, also known as Dr. Moe, has written several influential books on personal and spiritual development. His works offer practical insights into overcoming trauma and embracing holistic well-being. He is currently working on his upcoming book, "Breaking the Spell of Religion," which delves into the complexities of religious indoctrination and its psychological effects.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into:

• The subtle and pervasive nature of religious trauma.
• How to recognize and address trauma responses.
• The importance of self-love and spiritual growth.
• Practical strategies for healing and personal transformation.

Discover more about Dr. Maurice Turmel's work:

• Visit his website.
• Explore his books on Amazon.
• Listen to his music on Bandcamp.
• Stay tuned for his upcoming book, "Breaking the Spell of Religion."

Join us for an enlightening conversation that touches on the deep intersections of psychology, spirituality, and personal growth.

Transcript

1:14

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) All right. Aloha, Dr. Mo. Welcome to the pod. So nice to have you here. So we always like to start with your leaving the church story. So where did it all start to crack open for you? Well, it, yes, in the early 70s, you weren't here yet, in the early 70s, I started reading stuff by Norman Vincent Peale, and just about personal growth and such. And of course, he's a religious or religious oriented, but a very positive speaker, a very positive writer. But it was in the early 70s, I discovered personal growth. And the first book, the first personal growth book I was introduced to was called, I'm okay, you're okay, by, well, I can't think of his name, the author's name now. But this was like the beginning of an explosion of personal growth and self help materials. And so I always call that one my first one. But as I, as I got involved in that, what what happened was, personal growth was not only just about dealing with stuff. It was about, it was about opening doors to other possibilities. Up until that point, I was fixing televisions and radios for a living. And I was fixing copying machines. And I was driving around and I didn't see a higher education in my life at that time. But when this started to happen, that's when I, that's when I clicked on to it, took a took a introductory psych course. And that introduced me to a lot of subject matter, including religion. And, and it lit a fire. So that was 1973. And 10 years later, in 1983, I graduated with a PhD in psychology, and became a fully functioning therapist. I stopped being involved in my religion. As I said, in my letter to you, I grew up in Catholicism. And I stopped my involvement with it. But it wasn't until I started working with people who were traumatized by religion, they're traumatized by other things. And, and, you know, the usual array of stuff. But they were traumatized by religion in a way I hadn't even imagined. And as I got into the subtleties of what these people were going through, I realized that I was carrying that, that very same trauma myself. And because it's so subtle, at those early levels, it's so subtle, that you're actually programmed to be ashamed to be even questioning it. You know, it's, it's so sophisticated, their whole, their whole indoctrination system is just so sophisticated. That all these buttons are installed. And when you're a child, what do you know, you know, your parents are in this religion, their parents are in this religion, you know, what do you know that this is normal? And, you know, along the way, well, everybody else's religion is wrong, and yours is right. And, you know, that's just the way it is. So as I worked with people going through this, I realized for myself, that I had to, I had to deal with those issues myself. And so over the years of training, and then in my early years of practice, I would I was still seeing a therapist myself to deal with these kinds of issues. And so the religion thing, it just grew stronger and stronger in terms of my personal understanding. And I mean, what, if you've lost someone in your life, you know how that feels? You know, that pain, right? Well, when you when you when you get in touch with a part of you, that's kind of buried underneath all this indoctrination stuff. It's like meeting a different person. And and you're uncovering, you know, a lost child, but it's you, it's a part of you, that because of that conditioning process got buried under layers and layers of, of, of attitudes, and guilt and shame. And, you know, being defined as a sinner, that kind of stuff, you know, which until you start questioning that, it's just your normal. But when you start questioning it, and you're hearing from other people, I, I worked with people from Jehovah's Witnesses, I worked with aboriginal people who went to residential schools. And in Canada, there's, there's a huge explosion of events in the last two years, to the point where the Pope came to make an apology to her, because they were finding bodies in the distant areas of these residential school lots in here in Canada. And these were kids that were allegedly runaways, when in fact, they died at the hands of these religious people. And so when when I think about the bigger picture of what what Catholicism and Christianity was doing going around the world, in the case of this event, it probably happened in Hawaii, they came there to knock the the savage or the primitive, the primitive spiritual beliefs out of people and install their forms of Christianity. They did the point actually, that they made it illegal for anyone to olelo, which is the Hawaiian language, they couldn't speak the language, they couldn't olelo Hawaii, olelo means language, but they weren't allowed to speak the language, they weren't allowed to dance hula, they weren't allowed to sing their songs, they weren't allowed to have any connection whatsoever, like even the kids would get in trouble. And this is in the 1950s. I personally know people who grew up in school, they would get like lickings from their teacher, if they were caught like dancing hula or speaking olelo or anything, completely eradicate the culture. That's what they've done everywhere that they've colonized. That's it, Melissa, that's it, that's the nail on the head. And my spirituality now is very much Aboriginal, like the way they view nature, the way they interact with nature, the way they respect nature, and they respect the balance of life. And you take what you need, and you give thanks for what you receive. You don't annihilate, you know, whole populations of different animals and such. And most certainly you don't annihilate populations of people, because you think your stuff is better than their stuff. This sounds like the same story that echoed right across this country where I live. And anyway, so digging into that, here's something I discovered just very recently. For a long time now, I'll go back 12, 15 years, I started writing essays on dealing with religion. And I call these essays, the series, I call them Religion Doesn't Have a Prayer. And those essays were published at a European website called Trans4Mind. It's the word trans, the number four, mind.com, if you ever want to look it up. They're publishing, and for a long time, really, really good personal growth, spiritual growth kinds of materials, stuff that you would appreciate. And that's where that began for me. But then as I learned from the people I worked with, and saw these things in myself, those trauma factors, I realized that there's a big healing needed here. Not any different than the kind of healing you go through when you're saying goodbye to a loved one. There's pain, there's crying, there's emotional release. And when you touch these sore spots, things can be quite explosive. And one of the things that's buried the deepest of all is rage. People experience and feel rage at this institution that just pummel them with their, for me now, it's nonsense, you know, but conditioning and conditioning and conditioning. And from a psychological point of view, the conditioning is you're a sinner, you're bad, you're defective. And your only way to heaven is to go to confession and do what we ask you to do. You know, put money in the kitty, light candles and pray. We sell redemption. It's kind of like... It's always about outsourcing your personal power. Touché. That's it. And so recovery for me, and for the people I work with, is about getting in touch with that deeper self, crying your way through your grief and sorrow for what that child of you, for what that younger part of you lost. And then as you get, as you just get deeper inside, the glow of heartfelt love, unconditional love, just starts to grow. And it's a hard message at first, but you actually, you get the message that it's okay to start loving yourself. Oh my God, oh my God, if you're in front of a Catholic or a nun or something, you know, it's ooga booga. It's just horrendous. Yeah, I recently had a family member post on Facebook, you know, it's been a lot of backlash since I started this podcast. I'm from an apostolic Pentecostal family. And someone posted that self-love was satanic. Oh my God. Yeah. So just to affirm what you're saying. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh no, Melissa. So you're already facing the consequences of this position that you've taken and what you stand for now. Those consequences are there for me too, because the extended family is still very Catholic. But I have at least one sister of four, who is very much appreciative of what her big brother is doing. And she reads everything. And she had her own dislike and rage against the church for lots of different reasons before I started putting out, well, I put all these essays together and developed this book. But as she started reading it, and she said, it's like, it's like, you know, you go to the doctor and the doctor says, okay, you got this, this and this, they give you a diagnosis. And now you have an understanding of why you feel certain things and what medicine you might need. She realized, she said, yes, I didn't know it. But I'm trauma, I have trauma over this religion that we grew up in. And just the language and the descriptions helped her make sense of that. And it's like, yeah, that's my condition. And now I need to heal this. Yeah, 100%. So what I love about the book, I've read through it, I didn't have time to read the whole thing, but I did. I'm good at scanning and summarizing. And I'm really actually excited to go back and read it, because it's so in alignment with my own journey. And with the journey of other people that I've had on this podcast, it seems like the experience that I have found is the journey always leads us back to ourselves. And we're always empowered by unconditional love, no matter who what the path was, that's where we always land. And I find that so interesting. You know, that was my experience. But I had no idea that every guest I would bring on from all different walks of life, from all different experiences, it was the same thing, finding their way back to themselves, and then experiencing the power of unconditional love. And I want to speak to what you said earlier about that child coming in, because I had that experience. And, you know, I remember telling my therapist one day when I was in the early stages of the, because I deconstructed, you know, 20 years ago, but I moved away and didn't really acknowledge any of the trauma or anything, I was just spiritual bypassing my way around it for two decades. And when I finally started doing some deep trauma therapy, I became aware of how deeply it was affecting me and religious trauma. And as these things started to lift, that experience of letting that child out, things started to look different. Like I would go to the same places that I had been, but see them in a different light, see them in a different way. And she had said to me, you know, that's just you meeting new parts of yourself, you meeting parts of yourself that you haven't seen in a long time. So yeah, I think that's really beautiful. And that's been my experience is the more I uncover and deconstruct the indoctrination, the more I realize I'm like, oh, this is who I've always been. Like I didn't become something like this is who I've always been. It just had a bunch of junk out on top of it, you know, you're, you're, you're open, you're reopening, or you're not real, you're opening the package to who that core Melissa person is. And that, that, that unhindered energy, and whatever she's attracted to, and, and what's important to her, you know, without without the cloud of all this imposed stuff, you get to know her. And if, for me, that's that becomes spiritual, and spiritual, in a sense, like spirituality is not religion, and religion is not spirituality. Spirituality is innate. It's, for me, it is. And for most people that I meet, go undergoing this very, this is a major transformation. Yeah, when I was doing my degrees, the thing that I studied was major transformations in in, in people, people of renown. For example, Herman Hess, Thomas Merton, who's a who is, was Catholic oriented, but a spiritualist. And his great book is called Seven Story Mountain. Oh, H. Maurer, an American psychologist, who, who wrote extensively about forgiveness. And another person that most people don't know about his name is Clifford beers. But he wrote a sensational book at the turn of the last century, called A Mind that found itself. These are people that went through major transformations. And so that became a backdrop to what I was doing. But the common denominators are exactly what you're describing, what you're describing is, is what I experienced myself, is what I witnessed with people I worked with, you know, in the therapy room, and, and who I hope to reach now, by pulling all this material together to, to just get people to get back in touch with that little child in within, and, and to understand and allow that self love is not narcissism. It's self appreciation. And it's, it's, it's about allowing that flower to bloom, that flower that is you to bloom. That's a I love that analogy. And that's what it has felt like for me is a blooming for sure. I want to build a foundation here because we got a lot to get into. Can you you know, your the basis, the premise of this is in religious trauma? Can you for those who aren't as familiar who are listening? Can you give us like a definition? And maybe what are your what do you see as the key characteristics of religious trauma? Well, I'll summarize it under the heading of demolished self esteem. You're being from the from the get go, you're being in in most Christian religions, and other fundamentalist religions, you're being defined as a sinner. So the natural, the natural bond that you should have, or would have with your parents, especially your mother, is, is, is being blocked by this definition. And if she, you know, if she's an indoctrinated person as well, she's the person we connect with first. So at least at a physical level, we get that bonding. But when the definition start pouring in, and the typical definitions of Christian religion are, number one, you're a sinner. All right. And some, some Christian religions, mine, there's original sin. So you're not only a sinner, as a definition, but you arrived here that way, in some faulty package, which is absolutely nonsensical. So all the basics that the that that they pound into you, which are all based in sin, and the two main weapons are guilt and shame, shaming you into nothingness, shaming you, then you start to believe what they're telling you. And you start shaming yourself, and guilting yourself, and disliking yourself. And that's personal destruction. You're doing it unwittingly, because you're following their program. You're not, you're not doing this, because, because this seems to be a good thing to do. You're doing it because it's the way of your culture. And it's the way of that religion. This is where, so anything that destroys your self-worth, that's trauma. Anything that abuses you, and calls you down as a person, in terms of your, your personal value, that's trauma. And, and the effects of trauma show up as anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and, and that list that, you know, you can expand on, you can expand on all of that. And what's the worst feeling on the planet but feeling shame? Like, it means, it means that I'm defective. It means that, that I shouldn't even exist. It's, it's so, it's so damaging. It's, it's, for me, and I've used this term, I don't know if it's in the book or not. I called what they've done, religion has done to people, you and me included, a crime against humanity. Yes. That's what I call it. Absolutely. That's what I call it. And, and so that's trauma. And like any other kind of trauma, whether it was an accident, or that you, you, you, there was a, you know, you had a close call, someone threatened your life, that kind of thing. Those traumas, um, people coming back from wars, post-traumatic stress disorder, right? Well, there's, there's the, the new terminology, as it affects religion, is called religious trauma syndrome. And it's going to start showing up in, in the, in the definition books for psychological disorders. Just like post-traumatic stress disorder emerged in the 60s and 70s, for people coming back from the Vietnam War. It emerged in the US primarily, but there were other countries involved in that. And it used to be called shell shock. That's what it was called in World War One and in World War Two. But, so this, this, this trauma now has, it's going to, it has an identification. And if you Google religious trauma syndrome, you'll see a pop-up everywhere. And, and, and if you, if you Google, and you probably have done on this, but if you Google religious, religion in decline, they're on, they're on a steep dive down. Yeah. I don't, I don't Google a lot. I, I'm very intuitive. I can feel that I feel the energy. I see it happening. It's, it's a movement. Trust that energy. And that's what you're doing. And now you're, you've opened the door for people to share with you and you're helping people trust that energy. You've, you've got firsthand experience and you've got people like myself who've lived it, but also have a professional experiences with helping other people. And you're, you're right on the money. You're right on the right path. And so things have to be defined first. It's like, it's the diagnosis, right? It's the diagnosis. You have religious trauma. Oh my God. What is that? All right. And then, so in the book, it's, it's, it's explained. Well, what chapter is it? Yeah, it's pretty, it's an easy read. It's, it's not like super heavy in jargon or anything. It's very layman's for those of you who are listening. It's really from what I have, you know, looked over and been able to see from what I read, like you said, I was able to scan it pretty easily because it's very clearly laid out. It's it's really a roadmap. It's beautiful. Good. It's chapter 11, abuse victim profile. But everything, everything prior to that is leading up to it, including my own story. And, and, and, you know, then the things that I take on, like the nonsense of, of sin, the nonsense of guilt and shame, the nonsense of needing them for your redemption. Well, after, after they've condemned you and told you you were worthless. Right. After all of that, basically they're set, they set up a marketplace for themselves. And, and now, you know, now they're the distributors of this artificial thing called redemption. So you confess or whatever your religion requires you to do, but first they defined you as they defined you as defective. Right. So I'm curious though, what, what have you noticed between the differences in your patients, between women and men and their experience of trauma in the church? Well, men typically, you know, batten down the hatches and block, whereas women are more amenable to dealing with issues because they're, they have a different level of permission to feel already. So they it's, it's okay for them to feel pain. And feel sorrow and cry and, and men are getting there now. And you even see it on television when people are having men are having an emotional moment. You see the tears run down the face and they're not running away, hiding, being ashamed of those emotions. So, but men are still behind the curve as far as being in touch with their feelings, but it's coming. Yeah, definitely. And the younger generations are, are definitely more in touch or in balance with their masculine and feminine energies. But as far as in the church and the experience of in the church, because from my experience, like men, we we've all experienced trauma, but men had a lot more power and were put on a pedestal in a way and women had a much greater loss of autonomy. So I'm just wondering in your patients, how you saw that show up differently between men and women? Well, it was easier to get, to get women to the, to the point where feeling the pain of the trauma, whatever it was, and in particular, the trauma of, of how their religion treated them and diminished them. And once, once you, once you're there and it's okay in their own mind to feel these things, it's easier, it's easier for women to get there because there's a general, like I said, a general permission for women, just an open door to feel at different levels. And by the way, that's why women live longer than men, because men repress this energy. And you, you talk about energy, this energy turns into disease. It, it attacks the body on the inside because repressed emotions, that's a pressure. And, and, and, and they translate into, into different and into, into different, well, definitely psychological issues, but, but chronic physical issues, they translate into those things. So, but as, as men get the message that it's okay to feel and, and it's difficult for them because they've been programmed against it, you know, the British stiff upper lip, that just means swallow your feelings, right? When you're dealing, when you're dealing with very difficult stuff, that's okay. But post-traumatic stress disorder is when you, you're not in that, you're not in that danger anymore, or that circumstance where you have to be stiff, you can now deal with what you had to suppress. You can now deal with those feelings. And that's why those people, the military people, as an example, recovering from PTSD have less problems, emotionally and psychologically than the previous generations who had shell shock. And their only outlet was to go to the, the local Legion for, for ex-military people and drink those feelings. That's what, that's what drugs are for. It's drowning, numbing the feelings. That's all it is. That's all it is. So it's, it's, it's better for men now. And, and I chatted with a former pastor yesterday, and, and he runs a podcast and he's very open to his feeling. And he's just, he's just a different version of you. His, his, his doors are open to people, you know, abused and hurt and traumatized by their religion and getting to the heart of the matter, the feeling level. So for, for the people who turn to him for, for, and he's lived it. You may have heard of Dr. Darrell Ray. His, his book is called The God Virus. A lot of similarities there, the way he describes his upbringing and evangelical Christianity. But he's, he's in a different place in terms of outcome. He's, he declares himself to be an atheist. That's, that's his choice. And that's his decision. For me, it's not like I went, there's this thing called spirituality. I'm going to go find it. No, no, no. When you, when you get in touch with yourself and you open up to that deeper self, the spirituality is already there. At least that's my experience. And it just emerges. Well, it's our existence, right? It's just getting to our true essence. Exactly. It's our core. It's the energy that animates this body. These bodies are just things we wear while we're here on this planet. And, and we're here for different experiences. And you and I are having this experience of working through the trauma of religion and offering what we learned to other people. Yeah. Helps them through it. So on it, like this energetic, like trauma level, how do you see, like, especially with the Catholic church, the Catholic church, the Catholic church is so global.