Getting Out of a High-Control Group
Some time ago, IGotOut.org posted a prompt about telling your story of leaving a high-control group. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Even though I’ve written pieces of my journey, I decided I wanted to write a short summary of the experience of leaving the high-control environment I used to live in. I hope it helps you in your own path forward.
Eight years ago, I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter in the Christian Patriarchy movement.
I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and terrifying fear. My voice was silenced, and I had no agency over my life. I was not allowed to get a job outside the house, not allowed to go to college, not allowed to date. I had few friends and was mostly cut off from extended family.
The conservative Christian church I was a part of as a teenager was deeply invested in teaching strict gender roles, homeschooling as the only way to raise children, courtship instead of dating, and father-controlled families. Hate speech toward women and the LGBTQ+ community was preached from the pulpit. In this church, I learned to fear everything and to hate myself.
As I reached my mid-twenties, I was also experiencing verbal, emotional, spiritual, and financial abuse in my home, but I didn’t have the language to describe it. I had been through one failed courtship that left me hopeless and broken. I wanted out. I stopped eating very much, and I started drinking my parents’ alcohol in secret. I started thinking about how it would feel to kill myself. I was headed down a path of self-destruction.
The reason I didn’t leave for so long was because I believed it was God’s will for me to suffer in this way. All I was supposed to do was submit to my father, and then God would bless me. Even when a couple people outside my family noticed how miserable I was, they told me it would get better—I just needed to submit.
But the cognitive dissonance became too much to bear: I was being told that this lifestyle was the only good way to live, but I was experiencing so much pain and hopelessness.
When I finally got my own computer and started reading about people who had experienced abuse and who had left Quiverfull, Vision Forum, and similar high-control churches/cults/families, I began to gain the knowledge and courage I needed to start speaking up for myself.
The abuse got much worse when I used my voice, but I didn’t have anything to lose. I decided to get out.
I had a few people in my life who were supportive of my leaving (one of whom I eventually married), and I knew in my gut this was the best decision for my safety and happiness. It took a lot of time to save money and find the support I needed to leave.
I was always taught not to trust my heart, but that kind of teaching is what made it so difficult to leave. Now I am learning to listen to my intuition and leave environments, situations, and relationships when they are harmful.
It has been difficult acclimating to a world I was always taught to fear. It was challenging to get into college and study in ways that were foreign to me. It has been eye-opening to realize that patriarchy exists outside of the church too, and that I still need to use my voice and push against oppression.
I have lost relationships, my previous framework of thinking, and my tightly held certainty, and there is grief in this. But this kind of grief has led to great joy in the life I have gained.
Going through religious trauma therapy and spending time with people who accept me have been vital to my healing and moving forward. Instead of finding a world of fear, I’ve found people who love and support each other, people who don’t show love through control.
The liberation of having agency in my life is worth it. I have choices now, and even though that can be overwhelming, I’m thankful I don’t have someone else telling me how I should live and love. I finally got my degree at the age of thirty, and I’m able to work in a career that I love. I’m free to love the man I hadn’t been allowed to date and to build a life with him away from shame, judgment, and narrow-minded thinking. I’m free to pick which movies I watch and music I listen to. I’m free to take the space and time I need. I’m free to speak up about abuse and injustice. I’m free to think and plan and dream. I’m free to be myself.
If I could talk to my former self, I would tell her not to lose hope and to trust her intuition. I would tell her that there are other ways to live and that abuse is never okay. I would tell her that anyone using God to control, manipulate, and harm others doesn’t know the God of love. I would tell her that the world is wide open for her to explore when she’s ready. I would tell her it gets better on the other side.