The Ins and Outs of Purity Culture Trauma for Millennials
As a millennial raised in purity culture, you are facing a whole host of challenges as you start dating and getting into relationships that you weren’t prepared for. You weren’t taught comprehensive sex education or about consent and, most importantly, you were taught that your worth or value as a partner is tied to your sexuality. The problem with all of this is you don’t believe it anymore.
You may be asking yourself, how do I heal from something that I no longer believe but still seems to have a hold on me?
While part of you might want to freeze from fear and symptom overwhelm, the other part of you knows you won’t be able to move forward unless you make a change.
The good news is, you can begin to date without panic or shut down by slowing down and taking dating one step at a time.
In this blog post, I’ll delve into purity culture trauma and share three achievable steps forward that will help you when recovering from purity culture so that you can have the relationships you yearn for.
But first, let’s debunk a common myth about purity culture trauma
Before we dive into the depths of purity culture trauma, it’s important to dispel a common misconception that often clouds the understanding of millennials, just like you.
Maybe you’ve heard that trauma happens after one big (or long), life shattering event, and this misunderstanding can actually prevent you from healing from purity culture because it minimizes the psychological effects purity culture had on you.
Contrary to popular belief, trauma does not have to be one big event that changes everything. Trauma is anything that is too much, too fast, too soon, too hurtful, or too little for too long. The word that gets put in front of “trauma” is just a qualifier–religious trauma, purity culture trauma, childhood trauma, sexual trauma, war trauma. It’s all trauma in different contexts.
You don’t need to have gone to war to have experienced trauma. Your experiences and the ways it’s affecting you now are valid and–good news is–you can heal from it and move on.
Let’s dive in to accepting anger, coping with shame, and rejecting the suffering servant identity – the three actionable steps that will help you reject purity culture in your mind AND your body so you can date, have sex, and cultivate healthy, loving relationships.
Accepting Anger After Purity Culture
One of the most common and natural responses once you’ve cognitively rejected purity culture is to be fucking angry about it. Angry at how unprepared you are to enter the dating field; angry at the downright emotionally manipulative bullshit the adults in your life taught you; angry that it still makes you feel less desirable and valuable; and angry that your actions still align with purity culture even when you hate it.
But at some point that anger gets heavy and exhausting. When you don’t accept anger as a natural part of healing from purity culture, you get stuck in it. And that’s the thing. Anger is only one part of the process.
Accepting anger is a liberating act for millennials experiencing disgust, panic, or total shut down when dating because you are no longer resisting the emotions you feel about being raised in purity culture. Anger is just like any other emotion, you have to feel it in order to feel something else. Once you accept the experience and the anger as a natural consequence, then you are ready to move on to the next stage of healing.
Many people who are new to (or just woken up from) purity culture trauma struggle with shame and guilt that you’ve been indoctrinated into and conditioned to respond to at a physiological level.
Rather than get discouraged by feeling angry past when you think you “should”, the key to feeling something new and different is to create a non-judgment zone where it is perfectly acceptable for you to feel the anger.
Rather than get discouraged when you automatically reject the offer to add a sexual component to your relationship or the dissociative autopilot your body knows so well, the key to pleasure-filled sex and finding a healthy, loving relationship is to actually believe that it’s possible.
To get started, set aside some time where you won’t be distracted–silence your phone and leave it in the other room, take off the Apple watch, when no one else is home. You might choose to paint or journal, and as you do, let your emotions guide what you create. When it feels like you’re done (no need to set a timer, you’ll know), ask yourself “what do I feel right now? What has shifted for me? Where do I feel that in or around my body?”
Coping with Shame Because of Purity Culture Trauma
Purity culture made the stakes extremely high and the consequences dire. You had to make a pledge (maybe even, publicly) to remain completely abstinent until you achieve a cisgendered, heterosexual monogamous marriage for life…or else. And the “or else” is what caused so much shame. Once you understand that sex doesn’t change who you fundamentally are as a human being then you can start to unpack the shame purity culture indoctrinated into you.
Coping with shame could be the missing piece of the puzzle if you, time and again, notice yourself changing the way you date to adhere to outdated purity culture standards but you still feel like these beliefs that you no longer believe still have a hold on you.
If you grew up in purity culture, you were likely forced to agree to a standard that was never meant for you and that was unrealistic and unhealthy for you to keep. Those “biblical teachings” (this is in quotes because it is using the Christian Bible out of context) don’t translate to the modern world we live in. So it is absolutely necessary to learn how to cope with shame in order to heal from purity culture.
Shame is a really big, paralyzing emotion. Brene Brown, famed shame researcher says, “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment.” What happens when we feel ashamed about something is we hide it. We try to make sure that no one finds out about that thing. This is essentially what purity culture taught you to do. If you keep it quiet, that inner critic–previously dubbed Holy Spirit but now we know better–piles on the judgment and makes you believe that if anyone finds out about it, they won’t love you; they’ll leave you; etc etc etc. This is what fundamentalist religion wanted you to believe because it conditioned you to stay in line and not disrupt the power hierarchy or your dependence on the religion.
Brene Brown tells us that what actually transforms shame is talking about the thing you feel ashamed of. She says, “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” Shame can’t survive without secrecy or silence. What this looks like practically is opening up to a safe friend, family member, or therapist. But it also looks like opening yourself up to you. Sitting with yourself in uncomfortable-ness of the now, but not yet of a feeling (a.k.a. Practicing self-compassion even when you don’t feel it 100% yet).
The good news is, it’s not rocket science either. Brown says, “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’” What is magical is sitting with a therapist who truly gets it–the fundamentalism, the purity culture, the values confusion now, all of it–who hears you, who sees you, and who says, “You’re not alone. I’ve been there too. But I’m not there anymore, which means there’s hope.” That’s when your life changes forever.
Rejecting the Suffering Servant Identity
Rejecting the suffering servant identity, a theme throughout the Christian Bible rooted in the belief that you have to suffer to be made pure, may just be the key you've been searching for if you've tried to push past the panic attacks and dissociation, yet you’re still unable to connect to desire or be physically intimate with the person you’re dating.
This approach can be the missing piece of the puzzle, especially if you've found yourself caught in the cycle of feeling panicked and either, pushing past it (so you’re actually more panicked) or dissociating and, in the end, you ghost whomever you are dating.
To effectively reject the suffering servant identity, start with small steps. Begin by repeating the affirmation “suffering is not ‘doing the work’” anytime you are tempted to push past all the warning signs. The suffering servant narrative conditioned you to believe that you must suffer in order to be deemed worthy, holy, and healed. This contradicts everything neuroscience tells us about healthy brain development.
As you repeat to yourself your new favorite affirmation, the next step is to back off. Instead of pushing yourself to feel or do or think about the thing that is causing the anxiety, pause and go make a cup of tea, take a walk around the block, or cuddle up with your pet. Choose an activity that feels somewhere between neutral and pleasant and be as in it as you can be with as many of your senses as possible. This will allow your nervous system to reset, reinforcing that you are safe. Because you are.
Over time your nervous system will learn that you are safe and will send less of those warning signals. Your nervous system has been conditioned to send warning signals at the hint of any physical intimacy (or even the thought of it) which basically keeps it online all the time. This is a problem because your nervous system wasn’t meant to be online all the time. One of its primary jobs is to alert you to a threat. So conditioning it to alert you to a possible threat any time you get close to someone creates chronic stress. Stress is an actual physiological response (a.k.a. Hormones released into the bloodstream) and has long term physiological effects when the body is releasing these hormones on a long term basis.
By consistently incorporating this affirmation and a neutral activity, you can reject unnecessary suffering, transforming the way you navigate dating and sex by allowing your nervous system to relax out of chronic stress.
Your next steps to date + have sex after purity culture
To bring it all together, these three components of purity culture trauma will help millennials, like you, date and have sex without shame, anger, or panic.
While it may seem overwhelming at first, by focusing on locating and attending to the emotion you feel in and around your body, you will be one step closer to judgment-free sex post-purity culture and healing your nervous system.
Ready to explore this further in therapy?
Purity culture can leave you angry, panicked, and lost once you start trying to date outside of the fundamentalist religious context. You may have been so indoctrinated with purity culture that it seems unrealistic or idealistic to think that you could actually have a healthy relationship with your body, your sexuality, and your partner.
I support millennials who are struggling to date and have sex because of purity culture by helping them regulate their nervous system, get comfortable with pleasure, and believe it’s all possible.
Schedule a 15 minute no-strings-attached consultation by clicking the button below.
