Why Therapy Is Ok

It Can Be Quite Wonderful If You Can Get Past Your Ingrained Fear

This post is a continuation of the series on steps to take after leaving Scientology. This post has been the hardest in this series for me to write. Not because therapy is a big deal, but because it is important to explain how much different therapy is compared to what a person has heard about it in Scientology. Therapy is a huge hurdle for someone to overcome when they leave Scientology. The connotations of the evils of psychiatry are deeply ingrained in a Scientologist’s mind. This makes it difficult for them to consider even the word psychiatry after they leave. For someone who has never been in Scientology, this is a concept that is hard to understand.

In my opinion, this is the reason Independent Scientology popped up. People know they need help getting their mind straight after leaving, but can’t commit to seeing a licensed therapist. Hubbard preached that psychiatry was the industry of death. Scientology leans into that heavily. It is a very hard hurdle to jump over after leaving. So, it is necessary to explain what therapy isn’t before it is possible to say what it can do.

Therapy is not:

• Rote Commands
• Shock Treatment
• Commitment Behind Closed Doors Immediately
• Someone Telling You to Admit all Your Bad Intentions
• Holding onto Cans
• Being Told It’s All Your Fault
• Drugs being shoved down your throat
• Barbaric operations

As you note above, some of the things I list are things that Scientology say psychiatry is. Some of the items on the list are techniques Scientology uses when they are performing auditing on you. Unlike Scientology auditing, your therapist does not want to know what you did bad. They don’t sit you down in front of them with a machine between the two of you. They don’t ask you a series of rote questions that have nothing to do with what is bothering you. And they don’t ask you to remember earlier similar times this happened, unless that is relevant.

If that is all you are used to, you may question how the person can figure out what’s wrong with you. Well, that’s where you come in. You tell them. This is a foreign concept in Scientology. One of the things that most frustrated me about Scientology auditing was that I had certain things that I considered wrong with me. I was not able to say them out loud. I would have to wait until I was in session and hope that those specific questions came up that would lead me down the path that would help me fix the things I wanted fixed. Spoiler alert: They never did. And I made it all the way to OTV in Scientology. I got really frustrated along the way.

Auditing in Scientology is supposed to make you a superior being. The more auditing I got, even the solo auditing, where I asked myself questions, was a one size fits all. No one asked me how I felt except if I had enough to eat and enough sleep. Auditing, what was supposed to make me a superior being mentally, never once addressed how I felt mentally. And I grew increasingly frustrated. After OTV, I decided I was not going to get any more auditing in Scientology. I was in Scientology for another 6 years, but I never once picked up the cans again. I, unfortunately did other Scientology actions. One of these even made me lose a pregnancy.

The first couple of counseling sessions may seem useless. But they aren’t. The therapist is getting to know you. And you are learning to trust the process. Going to therapy once and saying “it didn’t work” is like taking one college class. Then you drop out and say “I can’t be a physicist.” Give it a chance. Scientology programming had a long time to ingrain itself in your brain. The experience doesn’t go away just because you left.

When I first sat in front of a therapist, I don’t remember the exact words, but she said something like “tell me about yourself.” I looked at her questioningly. I didn’t know where to start. In Scientology, you are given a specific question and you are expected to answer that question, no other question. An open ended question was so foreign to me it felt like a trap. I responded “I don’t know what you want me to say here.” That is what Scientology does to you. It takes away so much of your freedom that you don’t even know how to answer a simple question like who you are. Simple human conversation has been so stilted for years, every word out of your mouth so controlled, that you don’t know how to answer that.

It took several sessions before I trusted me enough to actually talk to my therapist about how I was feeling. I skated around my feelings for quite some time before I was able to even tell her I was devastated about getting divorced. Yes, devastated that I had escaped a man that almost killed me. We got to the bottom of that. I had been raised to believe that marriage was forever. So I was a failure because I left my marriage. In Scientology, I would not have even been able to say that to someone, much less address the pain it caused me.

And that is therapy. That is what it does. Therapy allows a person to address the fact that they left a high control group and they aren’t sure what they can control. They don’t know who to trust. Or even if they did the right thing. They don’t know how to now say they are sorry for things that are not their fault. They don’t have an education to speak of. And that’s just the start of things.

Allowing yourself to talk things out with someone who will not tell you it is your fault is the beginning of your path to figuring a way out of the pain. And you can begin to place blame where it belongs. You can quit blaming yourself every time someone does something to you. You can start seeing the world with clearer eyes. It is not the ultimate solution to repairing your life after leaving Scientology. It is the first step in healing your brain so you can repair your life. It gives you a fighting chance to live a happy and productive life.

I strongly recommend it. I don’t think I would be here without it.

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New FBI Files Post later tonight or in the morning. Sorry about the delay.