Episode 24: Externalizing Indoctrination

Slow Train to Heck

Zac Schraeder is a psychotherapist based in Toronto with a focus on helping folks process religious trauma - and particularly those of the LGBTQ2S+ community who grew up in the church, as they often receive so many deeply damaging messages from the religious communities of their childhood that have long-lasting effects. Zac joins the podcast this week to talk about the effects of that religious indoctrination, including his own experience of it growing up queer within the Catholic Church, and how we can work to process that messaging by realizing that those messages about ourselves came from outside of us and aren't valid.
We also talk a lot about how the Catholic Church (and many other Christian environments) have built-in mechanisms to suppress criticism and avoid any critical analysis of the harm their doctrines cause to people, and if you stick around to the end of the episode, I talk about how that is being shown again with how the pope recently phrased his apology to the indigenous people of Canada.
Content warnings: homophobia, depression, religious colonization