Happiness

5 Ways I Learned to Love and Embrace Laziness After Exiting A Cult

Leave a Comment / Cult Recovery, Happiness

I was raised in a religious context—which I call Gilead—that praised hard work, being busy and constantly making sacrifices. These ideas of proving our worth through productivity were engrained in us as children. And as we grew older, as mini-Handmaids we began to be competitive about who was more tired, who had worked right through lunch, who had put in a straight 24-hour volunteer shift (this isn’t an exaggeration; in my younger years, I also put in a few of those 24-hour shifts), who had gotten the least amount the sleep, and whose schedules were busier.

Most of our acts of being busy were attempts to feel validated and appreciated by others. As if somehow we could prove our worth and value by displaying how busy and productive we were. Or, look at how morally righteous I am because I never waste time!

One good friend would end every one of her text message conversations with a sentence like: “now I’m off to clean my house”. It didn’t matter what we had been talking about — the weather, dinner plans, random gossip. It was her way of letting me know that she wasn’t being lazy and was a very busy, hard-working person.

The English word “lazy” first appeared in the 1540s and was used to describe someone who disliked work, action or effort. No wonder we don’t like being labelled as lazy! Etymologists think that the word lazy likely came from Low German, from a source such as Middle Low German word laisch meaning, “weak, feeble, tired”.

Today, the word lazy can be defined as indolent, slothful, work-shy, shiftless, loafing, inactive, inert, sluggish, lethargic, languorous, listless, torpid, enervated, slow-moving, slow, heavy, dull, plodding; remiss, negligent, slack, lax, lackadaisical, impassive, good-for-nothing, do-nothing; leisurely.

Lazy is a small four letter word that has a lot of weight and meaning behind it. Instead of over-using the word lazy, I want to be more specific about what I mean.

Instead of calling myself lazy for ordering takeout instead of cooking dinner, I’ll speak more kindly to myself, “I’m tired so I’ll be ordering in tonight”. Rather than the word lazy when I don’t get as much accomplished in a day, I’ll think to myself, “I needed a slow day today”. And the next time I sleep in until noon and just stay in my pajamas all day, I won’t call it a lazy day, but I can describe it as: “I had the most leisurely day on Saturday”.

After leaving Gilead, here are five mindsets that I needed to change in order to let go of my obsessive, constant need to look busy. And instead, I began seeking a life that was more slow, languorous, leisurely (also known as lazy):

1. My worth is not tied to my productivity

If our worth was based on productivity and working hard, that would be a very sad way to view elderly people, small children and people with cancer.

With that said, one of the ideas I love in the Bible is the belief that every one of us has intrinsic value. The book of Genesis goes even further by teaching us that we were all “made in God’s image”. In other words, I am already enough. I already have value without needing to prove anything

2. Self-care is not a luxury

Have you ever thought about the safety instructions on a plane? We are told to put on our own oxygen masks first before helping children and others in need. That’s because we need to be living and breathing in order to reach out and help others.

Consider it as a form of putting of putting on your oxygen mask when you include a morning routine, cook something delicious for yourself, read something entertaining, watch something funny, take a nighttime bath. Those leisurely activities have the benefit of breathing life into our essential selves.

3. It feels creative to be bored

Do-nothing (another word for lazy) is an essential part of life. When I’m bored and I let my mind wander, it’s like my brain starts forming new synapses and I start having some really creative ideas and insights. As an example, when I allowed myself to be bored, I figured out a new way to rearrange my bedroom for maximum sunlight exposure. And it’s when I’m bored that I start coming up with new blog post ideas.

4. Take a nap

There’s a fantastic IG account run by a Black woman called The Nap Ministry with over 350K followers. It’s a wonderful resource for re-examining our views on rest, napping and mental health. We examine the liberating power of naps. Rest is a form of resistance. The more you sleep the more you wake up. Rest is soul care. Well worth your Instagram real estate!

If you’d like a more scientific approach to the benefits of napping, here’s a study done at Harvard Medical School. It was a small study but in summary:

Napping increased the time spent in slow-wave and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, which are thought to play important roles in restoring the body and brain. Whether they took long naps or short naps, participants showed significant improvement on three of the four tests in the study’s cognitive-assessment battery.

A daily nap can add to total sleep (plus time in restorative REM sleep) and improve daytime cognitive function. So take that nap!

My favorite recommendation about napping comes from a friend who recommends a “nappuccino”. He’ll have a small cup of coffee or a shot of espresso just before taking a 20 minute nap. Generally, caffeine takes about 20 minutes in our system before it gives us that little jolt of energy. So his 20 minute nap works out perfectly with his cup of coffee. When he wakes up from his 20 minute nap, he immediately feels that energizing effect from the caffeine and the nap.

5. Stop Keeping Up With The Kardashians

In my case, I started saying No to stuff that I was only doing in order to “keep up” with my peers. I guess I can be pretty competitive.

Then I began declining certain social events, book club, get-togethers or agreeing to last minute assignments and requests.

It was hard at first because I had created an identity around being helpful, being pleasing to others, being hard working. If I’m being really honest with myself, it put me on a moral high ground. I felt like a better person because of these acts. Remember those 24-hour volunteer shifts we would do? —it was mostly done to shock and garner praise.

Here’s the thing, we love our pets unconditionally and we don’t expect anything from them. Let’s be real, they really don’t do anything—they just hang out with us, they eat, they nap all day, they’ll have a snack, they play and they loved being petted. But we love our pets just for existing.

Once I started embracing the idea of laziness and being okay with the brighter side of being lazy: being slow, leisurely, and being laid-back, I started enjoying life more. I started sleeping better at night, my skin cleared up and I would start each day with a healthy dose of optimism. It was such a huge shift from my people-pleasing Gilead days.

You can call me lazy anytime.

Ask Me Your Cult Questions: My Top 3 Favorite Things Since Leaving A Cult

Leave a Comment / Ask Lady Whistleblower, Cult Recovery, Happiness, Wellness

Dear Lady Whistleblower,

Since you’ve left Gilead, what have you most enjoyed about your new life?

Signed,

Seeking Motivation To Leave

***

Dear Seeker,

What a wonderful question! Honestly, it changes on a daily basis but today here are the top three things I am thankful for:

1. Free Time

I used to devote hundreds of hours in unpaid volunteer work each year. I didn’t mind being unpaid because I had a fairly well-paid, performance-driven corporate job. What I did mind was feeling time-poor. I was living in a constant state of time poverty. Not to minimize the damaging effects of material poverty, but time poverty also feels like a constant state of stress and insecurity.

Without exaggerating, my day would look something like this. I’d be on my way to work by 7:00 am because traffic in my city sucks. Usually on the commute to work, I’d also be checking work emails or doing mid-week meeting preparations (such as figuring out my comments in a foreign language, or working on a student talk which due to the size of my group, I would be doing every 4-6 weeks). Once I got to work, I’d say a quick hi and chat up with my boss who would usually be in the office by 6:30 am. (Sidenote: he didn’t mind being in the office during the entirety of daylight hours because his family lived in another city and he flew home to be with them every weekend but during the week, work was his entire life. Great boss by the way)

Then I’d be pretty busy throughout the day but would try to workout at the company gym on my lunch break. This would be a pretty good stress relief for me – usually an intense HIIT workout, spinning class or doing 30 minutes on the treadmill. (Looking back, those high intensity workouts probably added to my stress. Knowing what I know now, I would definitely use that lunch hour to actually sit down and eat something delicious, have a conversation with a friend, listen to some fun music or read something funny.)

Then around 6:00 pm (a little earlier if it was a meeting night) I would try to leave the office. Meeting nights were a non-negotiable for me at the time which annoyed a lot of people including my boss – they couldn’t understand why I was refusing  to finish something for the team, or why this deadline wasn’t a priority for me.

On one hand, it helped me to establish some boundaries. Like, “come on guys – this is ONE night a week that I’m asking to leave the office at a decent time.” But on the other hand, I would always, ALWAYS feel guilty for leaving my small team behind as they continued working on a tight deadline. And in my industry, there was a tight deadline almost every day.

Obviously, by the time I got to the meeting I was stressed, frazzled, exhausted and feeling guilty. Feeling guilty about everything. Because I hadn’t prepared for the meeting enough. Because I should be still at the office. Because I had a speaking assignment tonight and I haven’t even had a chance to practice it beforehand. Because my BlackBerry (my work phone) had that damn red light on the corner that would light up and start flashing, letting me know throughout the meeting that I was being messaged with some question, request or emergency.

By the time I got home – usually around 10 pm – I was “tired but wired.” I got into a bad habit of having a drink (or two) to wind down. I began to rely on that nightcap a little too much.

Did I have a crazy, demanding job? Yes. But I loved my job and I loved the perks (meeting interesting business leaders, always learning something new about my industry, having my own company-issued credit card with an expense account, fun business trips staying at places like the Ritz-Carlton)

In the end, I really couldn’t continue living like that. So I said good-bye to that job (which always came second place to Gilead) and recommitted to my “career” as a full-time volunteer. That felt satisfying and fulfilling until ultimately, it didn’t.

2. Yoga

I love practicing yoga but it was forbidden in Gilead. In the mid-70’s Gilead issued an article warning that practicing yoga could lead to a blank mind and self-induced hypnosis. And no one wants a blank mind because it makes a person easy prey for demons. The article concluded with this damning statement: “The unvarnished truth is that yoga’s ‘serpent power’ is spiritism, which is condemned in the Bible“. Then in the 80’s there were further warnings about yoga. “Real yoga is not merely a form of exercise. It is a Hindu religious practice” The dangers of a empty mind was again explained: “One (yoga) practicer reports that during one expended period of exercise and mediation, he felt frequent attacks by invisible forces. The demons can take advantage of a mind that is empty and fill it with their own thoughts. So beware! This practice could make you their prey“. In the early 2000’s, the topic of yoga was again linked to voluntarily exposing yourself to spiritism and occultism. Instead of turning to yoga which is rooted in false religion, Gilead encouraged us to “look forward to God’s blessing of a righteous new system of things in which we can enjoy perfect health in body and mind for an eternity“.

I used to have terrible neck and back pain but since practicing yoga, those pains have pretty much gone away. I’m thankful that I can now practice yoga without feeling guilty or fearing the dangers of an incredibly helpful and restorative practice.

3. Harry Potter books

In my former religion, not only was I forbidden to read anything that had to do with magic, but I was truly terrified that reading those books would mean welcoming wicked spirits and demons into my life. 

One of the first subversive things I did as I began to see my religion with new eyes was to read the entire Harry Potter series. I was already an adult by then but this did not lessen the delight I felt in reading these books. I wanted to be friends with Harry, Luna Lovegood, the Weasley twins. I wanted to give Neville Longbottom a big hug. I wanted to try Butterbeer with Harry, Hermione and Ron at Hogsmeade. To me, these books are truly magical – in the best sense of the word.

The seven books (Goblet of Fire is my favorite) touch on every part of the human condition: being an outsider (Harry Potter lives with his aunt Petunia, uncle Vernon and cousin Dudley who hate him but mostly they just fear him and he’s stuck living in a cupboard under the stairs), loneliness (the final book in the series is incredible as Harry has to forge his own path, mostly on his own), being judged (I love Snape so much and I weep when I think of his secret and lifelong love for Lily, Harry’s mother) navigating friendships (there’s no better trio than Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione), occasionally having to break the rules (Harry’s invisibility cloak and the Marauder’s Map).

To me, these books touch on every part of what it means to be a human and I feel like I’ve become a better person by reading these books.

nepal, sunrise, mountains

How To Murder Your Cult Life

2 Comments / Cult Recovery, Happiness, Inspiration

Did you ever read Shonda Rhimes’s book, A Year of Saying Yes? If you’ve ever enjoyed watching Grey’s Anatomy (the first few seasons were amazing but fizzled out for me after Cristina Yang left the show), Scandal (I loved Olivia Pope’s style more than the actual storyline) and most recently Bridgerton (yes please!), then you probably know and love everything that Shonda Rhimes imagines and creates.

I first saw the cover of that book A Year of Saying Yes while vacationing somewhere hot and beachy. There was a pretty, suntanned girl about my age, a few beach chairs down who was reading the hardcover version of the book and kept turning to her to say, “omigod this book is so amazing.”

The title alone might not have enticed me but the beach girl’s enthusiastic, real-time endorsement of the book worked on me.

A few weeks later after finishing the book myself, I excitedly told my friends, “Guess what, guys? I’m going to start saying yesyesyes to everything”.

Looking back, it was kind of hilarious because I was inside a religion where we were taught to say “yes here I am!” to everything — as long as it wasn’t a birthday party or an invitation to go for a drink with people at work. In other words, every year was A Year of Saying Yes for me.

Sadly I can’t remember much about my own experience of trying a Year of Yes. Most likely, because my life — unlike Lady Shonda’s — didn’t change all that much.

Later, when I slowly and quietly started to exit my religion, I ended up doing the reverse. I had a Year of Saying No. Now, that was interesting.

I don’t know about Shonda Rhimes, but saying No was a lot harder to say than Yes.

Saying No initially took careful planning because I had unconsciously been saying yesyesyes to everything and anything. Not having an automatic answer for everything forced me to be thoughtful about the actual question. In the beginning, I thought I had to explain why I was saying No. My sentences would always sound something like this: “I’m sorry I can’t because…”

Later I learned Oprah’s wise advice: No is a complete sentence. Damn I wish I had known that sooner. If saying No as a complete sentence seems too harsh or abrupt for the situation, I might say something like, “I’m sorry that won’t work for me,” or “I’m unable to do that.”

Saying No surprised people who were used to me saying yesyesyes to everything. But in turn, I witnessed those friends starting to saying No themselves to scheduled activities/invitations/obligations that didn’t bring them joy. It made me think that people want to be able to say No but certain cultures frown upon it. In the Japanese culture, for example, the direct translation of the word No iie might as well be the equivalent of telling someone to F* off; on the flip side, in Chinese there are multiple ways to say No such as bu’yao, bu’xing, bu’keyi. And then many social environments (say, in a high control religious group or a top-down corporate culture) make it really difficult to say No.

Saying No meant I received fewer invitations to happy hour or dinner parties. But that meant I had more time for myself and activities that I truly enjoyed doing. And nothing was going to stop me from enjoying happy hour on my own!

Saying No meant saying good-bye to some relationships. But that was okay too, because a lot of those people were unhappy, overly judgmental, loved to gossip about each other and drained my energy.

It’s funny because I went back to A Year of Saying Yes and discovered this line: “Saying no was a way to disappear. Saying no was my own slow form of suicide.”

That’s when I realized that I needed that Year of Saying No to free myself from my religion. It allowed me to disappear and become invisible to my group. But I learned that I would be okay without them. Saying No was my religion’s equivalent of murdering my life. It might sound morbid, but that part of my life had to be killed off in order for me to start saying Yes again.

Let me know if you’ve ever had the desire to murder your life!

How Real Housewives Helped Me Through My Cult Recovery

Leave a Comment / Ask Lady Whistleblower, Cult Recovery, Happiness

Dear Lady Whistleblower,

I’ve just recently realized that the religion I belong to is a cult. What can I say? I’m angry at my parents for being blind and raising me in this religion. I’m angry for the childhood I never had. I’m angry that I never had a chance to attend college/university. I’m ashamed at myself for having spent most of my 20’s devoted to this religious cult.

I’m now doing a lot of reading about cognitive dissonance, cults, mind control methods and listening to podcasts like Leah Remini’s Scientology: Fair Game and others but I’m afraid that my free time is consumed with anger, shame and thinking about cults. Any advice on how I move forward and how to start letting go of my anger and shame?

***

Wow, congrats on the courage it takes to take that honest look at yourself. I once heard an interview about a man who had a horrific and traumatic childhood. He hadn’t properly looked at his reflection in the mirror for almost 50 years. How does that happen?

I tried that little experiment for myself. Could I brush my teeth, or put on makeup without actually looking at my reflection in the mirror. Amazingly yes, I could stand in front of a mirror but tell my brain to ignore that face, it had nothing to do with me.

Anyways, it’s quite possible that you’ve been doing a version of not looking at your reflection in the mirror as well. I know I certainly had! I saw things I didn’t like (religious hypocrisy, inconsistencies, double talk, beliefs that I didn’t agree with, etc.) but I would tell my brain to look away, it had nothing to do with me.

Besides, this life was “just a dress rehearsal” for the real life that was just around the corner. So I didn’t really need to take care of myself, both physically and psychologically. I had been refusing to look at my own reflection in the mirror.

Now in terms of what you’re going through right now — I think anger and shame allows us to process our past and begin healing. Anger can help us to channel our energy and passion into making needed changes. And shame brings us to admitting that we might have done some pretty sh!tty things to ourselves and others, and hopefully start to make amends (with ourselves and others).

I was pretty ashamed of how I had treated one of my closest friends when she chose to leave my religion. I was young and self-righteous at the time and honestly had no guilt about shunning her. Fast forward to when I finally looked at my reflection in the mirror with honest eyes. I felt ashamed for how I had treated my friend. That shame moved me to analyze my religion. It led me to uncover the reasons why I thought I was morally superior to her and doing the right thing by turning my back on her. Along the way, I discovered that my religious beliefs were built on a foundation of sand, and were not tied to reality. Although it was mighty painful, the shame I felt for how I had treated my friend was an important catalyst for finally realizing that I had been living my life for a lie.

Phew, that was heavy. But needed to be said.

While shame and anger can be helpful emotions, we need to balance it with joy and relaxation. I slept so much during that initial time of leaving my religion. I also think crying is important. Why? Martha Beck — a former-Mormon who received death threats when she left her religion — says, “people don’t cry when they lose hope. They cry when they get it back.” Being able to cry was a signal to myself that hope and joy were close by.

I think it’s great that you are reading and listening to podcasts as part of your recovery. Those topics like mind control, cognitive dissonance and cults are pretty heavy. So my advice would be to balance that heaviness with some lightness too. Do you have any guilty pleasures? Mine happens to be reality TV shows. I love Real Housewives, Top Chef, 90 Day Fiancé. There’s a million fun podcasts that do hilarious recaps of episodes like Bitch Sesh, Juicy Scoop, Watch What Crappens, just to name a few.

I had lived most of my adult life conforming to a very sheltered, very strict Christian religion, so I almost felt like an anthropologist as I started watching these show. Fighting with your friends is okay? Making very bad decisions is normal? Over-indulging (alcohol, food, shopping) can lead to regrets but it happens to the best of us? It was like a fun, light way of re-entering the human world. A world that’s 100% imperfect but I felt a sense of kinship because it was just so relatable.

Obviously reality TV is, by nature, over-the-top, but it was an important form of education for me. It was a gentle and (often) hilarious way for me to re-enter the real world. A way to see how people fought with their friends, drank too much, made very bad decisions — basically all of the aspects of being a human. It gave my brain and psyche a break from some of the heavier healing that I had going on.

Actually, watching reality TV was a great way to gauge where I was at in my cult recovery and healing process. In the early days of realizing that I had devoted my life to a religious cult, I couldn’t laugh. I could barely smile. But slowly, as the healing began, Porsha from Real Housewives of Atlanta made me laugh again. Or watching Heather Gay in Salt Lake City describing herself to Coach Shah as a “flapper with cankles” made me react with a loud burst of laughter (I’m actually writing this as I learn that Jen Shah has been arrested for fraud). My laughter initially began as weird combo of snort+laugh but as time went on, it turned into a full belly laugh (my favorite kind of laugh). And sometimes if I was lucky, the Real Housewives would make me laugh so hard I could barely breathe and I had tears coming down my face.

So my advice is for you to find your own Real Housewives-equivalent that will help you bring lightness and laughter back into your life.

Albert Camus wrote, “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

It might still feel like winter for you, but please know that inside all of us is “an invincible summer” and there will be laughter and lightness in your life again.