Meet Robin, Your Guide

Joining a cult

In 1996, I joined a traveling Christian theater ministry. There are many in the organization that would resent it being called a cult, although I am not the first to suggest that it was. What few would be able to argue, however, was that it was without a doubt a high control organization. Arguments abound as to what defines a cult, but the problem with focusing on the definition is that it distracts from the real question, which is, what is the harm that "cults" (or more accurately high control groups) cause? The answer to that is that high control groups rob you of two things: resources and personal agency. (More on cults here. )

When I joined the organization, it was being led by the founder, who suffered a stroke a few years later. The organization was then supposed to pass into the hands of three "vice-presidents" who were to have equal authority. The vice-presidents were the founder's eldest daughter, her husband and one of the founding members of the organization. What quickly became clear, however, was that the founder's daughter had no intention of sharing power.

Around that time, I suffered the first of what would turn out to be a long series of breakdowns that would continue to occur for roughly the next two decades. In retrospect, however, what I have come to see is that every one of those breakdowns led to important break throughs. What was interesting was that while I received enormous support from other members of the organization for the tremendous growth I experienced following my first major breakdown, the stronger I became the more conflict I began to have with the founder's daughter - who by then had established herself as the very clear (and sole) leader of the organization.

What also became clear to me was how much control she expected to have over not just the organization, but everyone in it. Including - and perhaps in particularly - me. Although I could not yet put my finger on what the problem was, we very clearly had conflict. This was an international organization, with campuses all over the world, so I told her I felt like I needed to be on a different campus. She said something to me that profoundly changed my life. She said that she couldn't send me somewhere else because no one else could control me.

That started me down a path of questioning just how much control it was right for anyone else to have over my life. Eventually, those questions I began asking myself in private became questions I chose to ask very publicly, which got me fired from the organization. Although it was one of the most painful experiences of my life, it was also one of the best things that ever happened to me.

When I found myself suddenly and unceremoniously deposited back in Denver, CO (where I had spent my teen years), I had to focus on getting my feet under me and rebuilding my life. I didn't really have time to deal with the trauma and devastation of what had just happened to me. Thankfully, I was able to spend a few months at my sister's house, which helped me get back on my feet. I eventually got a job and a car and was able to start thinking about the future. It would not take long, however for the trauma to catch up, and one thing I have learned about trauma - you must deal with it or it will destroy you.

Eventually, I realized that although I had been drawn to a theater company, my true passion had always been movies, so I went to film school. It was there that I met and "fell in love" with a man for the first time in years. Although that seems like a great thing, it was actually a painful and traumatic thing - perhaps even more so for him. While falling in love puts many (if not most) women in a hazy, rosy glow, it mostly just made me furiously angry. Unfortunately, it mostly made me angry at him, although it would take me years to understand why.

That led to my second breakdown and the start of my understanding and realization of just how deeply my ideals and images around romantic relationships - what they meant, what they were "supposed" to look like, and my role in them - had been damaged by my religious upbringing. I was furiously angry at this poor man I fell in love with, because in the views I had been taught to believe, falling in love would most likely lead to marriage which would require me to completely give up my life and my identity. I would be required to simply become and extension of him - the way Eve was merely an extension of Adam, made from his rib. This was intolerable to me.

Beauty in the breakdown...

The therapy conundrum...

Although I knew by then that I had extremely serious issues and felt that I needed help, I was also very wary of therapy. Not that I felt any sort of stigma associated with therapy, but rather that I felt caught between two worlds. While I knew and understood by then that my religious upbringing had a severe and negative impact on my life, I was also starting to see the chasm between my own personal faith and the religious edicts I had been taught. I wanted (needed) to find a way to separate my personal faith from the religious programming I had been indoctrinated into.

Further, in my early 20's (just before joining the theater ministry) I had been referred to a "Christian counselor" by my Single Life Ministries pastor, who I had my first conflict with, when what I felt he (and my church) was teaching conflicted with what I read in the Bible. This conflict with church and religious leadership would become an ongoing theme in my life and lead to getting kicked out of multiple churches and religious organizations. Something I look back on now with zero regret. What I also came to realize is that the "Christian counselor" did not actually help me, but rather reinforced the very teachings I was coming to question about who I was meant to be and my role in life as a woman.

So "Christian" counseling was out, but I was also very wary of seeing a "secular" therapist who I feared would disregard or in some way diminish my personal faith-based values. In addition, at this time, there was no recognition or understanding of the concept of spiritual abuse. While I definitely knew that churches and Christian leadership had somehow contributed to and exacerbated my problems, I wasn't sure how, and so I felt that both Christian counseling and secular therapy were off the table for me.

Somehow, during this time, what I did realize was just how much I had in common with addicts. Although I had never had an alcohol or substance abuse problem, I began to attend open AA meetings, and was shocked to discover how much I resonated with everything I heard there. But AA is very adamant about only being for alcoholics, and so eventually I began to feel it was morally wrong to continue to attend AA meetings when I knew full well I was not an alcoholic.

From there, I began attending Alanon meetings, and it was there that I discovered the concept of co-dependency and became familiar with Pia Mellody's (paid link) work on codependency and love addiction. Although I had spent many years earlier in life in love with an alcoholic, I was not currently in a relationship with one. Like AA, Alanon is rather adamant about who it is for and who it is not. Eventually I felt the same moral conflict about continuing to attend Alanon meetings, so I stopped attending, but took all the materials with me. I felt a strong sense that there was enormous power in the 12-Steps, even without the meetings to support them.

What I also realized in both AA and Alanon was how often people found ways to circumvent what I believed to be the most powerful aspects of the 12-steps and even the group meetings. What I realized is that people found ways to appear to be doing the work, without actually doing the genuine work of recovery. The deep, painful self-exploration necessary to genuinely live a whole, complete, sober, free life. Before deconstruction was even a concept, I wrote an entire book, which I now would call a full deconstruction of the 12-steps. What each step meant and why it was important.

What I did not know was that would become the manual or guidebook that would carry me through the next decade of my own deconstruction experience. I began working the 12-steps all on my own, and then just kept working them and working them until they became second nature.

Through that, I began to understand the importance of the cyclical nature of the 12-steps. They were originally designed to be worked through in just a single weekend, but I also discovered that the more frequently I worked through them, the deeper and deeper the issues that they uncovered and resolved. The 12-steps are much more than just a recovery tool, they are also a diagnostic tool.

A different kind of breakdown...

In 2009, I experienced a breakdown of a very different kind. Like many people who suffered early childhood trauma, I had spent my entire life battling obesity. I had known for years that I had thyroid problems, and eventually came to realize I had PCOS, but I avoided doctors like the plague. Knowing what I know now, I am even more convinced that my decision was the right one. At the time, however, I had no concrete data to support my gut instinct, which was to stay away from doctors.

For years, I had watched women with very similar conditions to mine end up simply getting their body parts ripped out when Western medicine couldn't solve their problems. While I have known many women with thyroid conditions, I have never yet known one whose thyroid condition was "healed" or whose thyroid went back to functioning normally. Every woman I have ever met with a thyroid condition struggled for years before either having it removed or (as later became the practice) had it killed off with radiation.

While I had always known I was susceptible to diabetes and had struggled with sugar "highs" and sugar crashes for years, by 2009 I definitely had full-on diabetes and was losing feeling in my upper thighs (likely due to diabetic neuropathy). In addition, I was experiencing an alarming number of other health issues. I had always been able to at least moderately moderate my weight through exercise, but suddenly, whenever I would exercise, rather than feeling the normal endorphin rush, it would find myself crashing into a deep, dark depression. In addition, I became deeply afraid of eating, since every time I ate, it would send me into a fiery rage.

Once again, while I was painfully aware that I was in desperate need of help, I did not feel I could trust the options available to me. Thankfully, in the same way that I found therapeutic help through AA/ recovery groups, I also found help for my medical issues from a very unlikely source.

One more piece of the puzzle

The film school I was attending had a 2+2 program between a community college and a 4-year university. By 2009, I was close to completing my degree and taking the last few general education credits I needed. I took a class called the Biological Basis of Behavior, which was both a Psychology and Biology class, which I needed to fulfill my science credits. That class may have literally saved my life.

Like most obese people, I have spent most of my life on a diet, only to just keep growing larger and larger and larger. No amount of willpower seemed to be able to help me make the scales move in a downward direction. But in this class, I learned about neurotransmitters and how our "moods" are really just the work of neurotransmitters, or chemical "messengers." What I also learned is that hormones are also chemical messengers and (shocker!) it turns out that our bodies are subject to the exact same laws of physics as the rest of the universe. Namely the First Law of Thermodynamics and Einstein's most famous equation: E - mc². Which is to say that your body can't create something out of nothing.

We are used to thinking of food as fuel, which is somewhat correct, but what we fail to understand is that our bodies - just like cars - need far more than just fuel to operate properly. The same way your car needs brake fluid, windshield washer fluid, transmission fluid, oil and a host of other pieces and part to operate properly, so does your body. Also like a car, the more you use certain parts, the more likely they are to break down, but you can also keep them from wearing down and prolong the life of both the car and it's moving parts by doing regular and proper maintenance, such as checking the fluids and topping off what is running low.

Your body runs on and requires more than 100 different vitamins, minerals and amino acids every single day. Like most people in America (and a growing portion of the developed world) I have spent my life counting calories, with literally no idea that there were so many other nutrients to consider. My teacher recommended a book to me that would turn out to be just as life saving as the class. The book was called The Mood Cure (paid link) by Dr. Julia Ross, who also wrote another book that would turn out to be a lifesaver as well called The Diet Cure (paid link).

It's a miracle!

What I learned in my Biological Basis of Behavior class was that neurotransmitters are formed from amino acids (remember, your body can't just create something out of nothing, it needs materials to make hormones and neurotransmitters). Dr. Ross' book not only taught which amino acids are linked to which neurotransmitters, but also provided a wealth of information about the nutritional causes of a host of other issues I had. I started taking a few supplements and made a few changes to my diet and the changes to my mental and physical health were radical and immediate. It wasn't long before I was taking more than 30 supplements a day, and the change was profound.

I will never forget the first time I tried GABA. For most of my life, I have had people tell me to relax, calm down and that I was overthinking things. On some level, I knew they were right, but I didn't know how to calm down, relax and stop overthinking everything. Although I could not define it at the time (I only realized what it was like after it changed and I had something to compare it to) my brain had always been like a hamster on a wheel, running, running, running. All of a sudden, when I took GABA for the first time, it was like the hamster just suddenly stopped and for the first time ever I could just... not think!

What I came to realize is that it was normal to me to spend hours replaying every conversation I ever had with people over and over in my head, analyzing every word that was said, every action, every nuanced gesture of the other person. The way I would eventually contextualize this is that my "hamster" needed constant fuel, because it could not stop. My brain needed something to constantly be chewing over, becuase it didn't have an off switch.

Probably the only drug I ever tried that really liked was mushrooms. Thankfully, back in the day they were a lot harder to get ahold of than they are now since the discovery of the active ingredient psylocybin. What I realize now is that I loved them because they allowed me to stop thinking obsessively, much like the GABA did. The difference, however, was that the mushrooms actively inhibited my ability to think or plan, while the GABA allowed me to gain control over my own thoughts. I could think when I needed to, but I could also just sit, rest, relax and "turn off" my brain for a while.

** Side note: as I was writing this, I went to look up Dr. Julia Ross. Since writing The Mood Cure in the early 00's, she (among many others in her field) has now made the link to understanding what a profound impact nutrition has on addiction. This is the one "missing link" I find in AA or other 12-Step recovery programs. Conversely, however, many treatment programs that do focus on the importance of nutrition in treating addiction also drop the "spiritual" aspect of healing. Once again, we can't seem to understand that people are four-elemental, and for true healing to occur, you have to treat the whole person: mind, heart, body and soul!

Everything's coming up roses...

While the supplements and new eating habits had a profound impact on my mental health, which I expected, what I did not expect was the profound impact they would have on my physical health. As I mentioned earlier, prior to changing my diet, eating had become something of a nightmare, because it would throw me into a blinding rage. Although it had gotten extreme, I had spent roughly 20 years of my life tired, hungry and angry. The only time I wasn't hungry was right after I had eaten a meal large enough to make me uncomfortably full. I was tired most of the time because I found it impossible to sleep through the night, and I was angry becasue I was constantly tired and hungry!

As I mentioned, I had known for years that I had an underactive thyroid, but what I didn't know (and what no doctor at the time was liekly to tell me, because they didn't know either) was that the root cause of my thyroid issues was nutritional. What The Mood Cure helped me to see was that my erratic sleep patterns were due to my hypothyroidism and my hypothyroidism was due to nutritional insufficiency. When I started eating better and taking supplements, I not not only started sleeping through the night, but I was also full for the first time in years after only eating a small amount of food. Suddenly, I had all this energy and discovered what life is supposed to feel like!

I had also known for years that I had PCOS and had irregular periods for most of my adult life. Prior to changing my eating habits and taking supplements, I was only having maybe 2-3 periods a year. Suddenly, I was menstruating almost every month! I have also struggled my whole life with hirsutism (excessive facial hair) and although it is something I still struggle with, I went from needing to shave my face twice a day to avoid visible stubble to only needing to shave every 3-5 days.

Two other things happened around this time that further drove home for me not only how nutritionally deficient I had become but how important good nutrition is to mental health.

I remember just sitting on my couch one day and suddenly realizing I was happy. Nothing unusual had happened, I didn't have any plans I was excited about. I didn't have any particularly reason for being happy, I was just... happy. What I eventually came to reallize is that happiness is (or at least should be) our normal state! (As it is for me now.) What is sad to me now is realizing how many years I spent being completley miserable simply because I wasn't giving my body the nutrients It needed to keep me in my natural state of happiness!

The other thing that happened was just the opposite. One day I was crossing a parking lot, about to walk into a grocery store. I suddenly experienced this absolutely blinding, crushing rage. The same rage I had recently felt after eating, but this time it just hit me out of nowhere. I almost ran back to my car where I had a packet of all the supplements I was currently taking (I think at that time I was only taking 5-10). I took them all, and within minutes I regained the peaceful, serene feeling that had recentlly become my norm.

I only take a few supplements on a regular basis now, but I have learned how to get most of the nutrients I need from my diet. I no longer eat to lose weight and yet I have slowly been taking weight off the same way I put it on - a few pounds a month or about 20 pounds a year. No one wakes up suddenly 100 or more pounds overweight. It happens slowly, gradually, over the course of years and sometimes decades. It's a few pounds here and a few pounds there, then a diet that robs you of nutrients, after which you often shoot up several pounds higher than you were before you went on the diet. Then it's few more pounds here, a few more pounds there, another diet and another burst of weight gain. It's a vicious cycle that I finally got out of, regaining my physical and emotional health in the process.

There are so many things that make me angry, however. The first is that I have spent my life being told that obesity is the cause of so many of my other issues, and that they would magically disappear if I would just lose weight. It turns out, however, that obesity is simply one more symptom, not the underlying cause of so many of my other health issues. I still weigh 250 lbs, which is close to 100 pounds more than where I would like to be, but that is also almost 100 pounds less than what I weighed at my peak.

In spite of that, however, I no longer have diabetic symptoms or even struggle with sugar highs and lows. According to my Apple Watch, I sleep an average of 7 hours and 45 minutes a night. I go to bed around 10:00 pm and most nights I sleep straight through the night. In addition, I absolutely sailed through menopause. As far as I know, I never experienced a single menopause symptom other than simply no longer having periods. My last period was April 1 (April fools!) 2014, and boy was it a doozy! It was quite memorable, let me tell you and it scared me just a bit, but that was the last one and I haven't had one since.

Many people would say I'm "lucky" but I think it's one more thing that women in the Western world struggle with much more than is natural due to our nutritionally deficient diet. I would be interested to know how women who live in the part of the world that the "Mediterranean diet" is named for fare in menopause. I would be willing to bet a fairly large sum of money that it is considerably better than us.

Night and day...

The healing begins...

The next few years were an incredible time of healing for me, aided considerably by my newly balanced emotional chemistry. I came to realize that prior to changing my diet to predominantly consist of whole foods - unprocessed meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains - in addition to supplementing extra nutrients, I had felt like a walking nerve ending. Everything hurt me, everything effected me, I was just one giant walking emotion.

Now, I could move through life calmly, unruffled by life's little traumas and events. I suddenly cared so much less what everyone thought of me. While this is also a natural part of aging, the fact that it happened so suddenly also tells me that it wasn't just aging alone, it was that I was giving my body the nutrients it needed to create the hormones and neurotransmitters that could keep me emotionally stable in the midst of life's ups and downs.

I also realized that in the last few years of school I had become more and more isolated as I become more and more emotionally sensitive. With my emotions now stable, I was able to get back out and socialize again and spend time with friends. What I also began to tackle was my body image issues. Like most chronically obese people, I hated my body and poured nothing but abuse on it. Which I now realize only contributed to my obesity.

I discovered that loving your body doesn't mean getting it to a point where you actually like how you look. Love is a verb, it's something you do, it's not an emotion you feel. I set out on a journey to learn to love my body regardless of what it looked like. I learned to value and appreciate what it could do rather than how it looked.

During this time, I read two books in particular that helped me learn to love this (in my opinion at the time) "fat, ugly" woman's body I had been born into. A body I spent most my life hating. The first was Dr. Christianne Northrup's Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (paid link) and Clarissa Pinkola Estés' Women Who Run With Wolves. (paid link).

Learning to love my body

In 2009, I gave myself one of the best presents anyone has ever given me. I took myself to a nude beach. It's something I highly recommend for everyone, but women in particular. While it may take a long time to build up the courage to get there, it is one of the most freeing experiences I have ever had. But yes, it was a long journey to get there.

It started with a practice recommended in Dr. Northrup's book. Every day I would stand in front of a full-length mirror and tell my body what I liked, loved or at least appreciated about it. I would tell my feet how happy I was that they took me everywhere, my strong legs how much I appreciated that they could help me lift heavy things. I told my hands how happy I was that they helped me pursue my passion of writing.

The next step was going naked in a friend's hot tub. She and her husband lived out in the woods and had a "naked hot tub" where everyone was invited - although never, ever pressured - to go nekkid. I did not have the courage to go naked with she and her husband, but, I think sensing the journey I was on - as women often do - she invited myself and another friend over for girls - only naked hot tub night. There may or may not have been other substances involved in that evening, but it was one of the most freeing events of my life.

Soon after, I began planning a trip to Texas to go to Hippie Hollow, a rather famous (at least in Texas, and where else do you need to be famous?) public nude beach. The weirdest thing about it was how completely unweird it felt! A few days later, I had arranged to meet up with a friend for a few days to tour the Texas wine country. She asked me how it had been and if I was planning on going back. I had in fact planned to stop on the way back to Colorado, but then I started thinking that maybe I should be "responsible" and go back a few days early to prepare to go back to work. She said, however, that if I were going back to Hippie Hollow that she might join me, so that's what I decided to do.

She made the best comment about what it was like. As we were walking in, we were still fully clothed, yet people walking past us were completely naked. She said "it's like being in an episode of Star Trek and you're walking past aliens, yet it's all completely normal." And that was indeed the shocking part - how very normal it all felt.

The hardest step

You might think that going to a nude beach was the hardest step in my journey to learn to love and accept my body, but it was not. Far from it, in fact. I can honestly say without hesitation that the next step was literally the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. Wearing a bikini to a public beach.

One thing I have learned is that the kinds of small people who will criticize others are cowards. Although today I generally wear tankinis because I find them to be more comfortable, I ended up wearing bikinis for years and I have never once had someone make a cruel comment to my face. Whatever they may be saying behind my back is none of my business, but the only comments I have ever gotten are positive ones for having the courage to show so much of my very imperfect body in a world obsessed with perfection.

The next step, however, was wearing a bikini around people I knew - particularly men. Some friends invited me to spend a long weekend at Lake Powell and I decided to take one more step in overcoming my body image issues. I spent the entire weekend in a bikini. Although it was terrifying, and honestly, my boobs spent most of the weekend trying to escape (and often succeeding), it was one more step in my journey to overcome the shame that comes from living in a bigger body.

And on and on it goes....

I would love to say that was the end of my journey. No longer in a cult and now giving my body not only the nutrition it needed to remain healthy, happy and emotionally stable, but also the love and acceptance it needed. I was "healed", right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, I was not even yet past the breakdown stage of my journey. Although I had already had multiple breakdowns that led to various different kinds of healing, I still had yet to address the cracks in my faith. Since being fired from the theater company, I had left church altogether and really had no plans to return. Like so many people, however, I had not yet actually wrestled with my faith to understand and determine what I really believed, I had simply back burnered it and largely ignored it, but that respite was about to end.

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