Annabel Furber: If you've enjoyed today's discussion, I invite you to share this episode and subscribe to Abel Pathways podcast on your favorite platform. Your support helps us to share these meaningful conversations with more people. Visit abelpathways.com or check out the detailed show notes for links to resources and organizations mentioned in today's episode. Have thoughts about this episode or suggestions for future guests? In today's discussion, a number of topics will come up, including discussion of alcohol abuse, experiencing cults, bullying, trauma, anxiety, mission kid specific trauma, ⁓ institutionalized homophobia, and the process of Today we're exploring the experience of leaving a high control group with Adam Jones, reflecting on his personal and therapeutic journey. Welcome to Abel Pathways podcast. I'm Annabel Furber, founder of Abel Pathways, where we provide executive function coaching for neurodiverse individuals and professional development for educators. path that led to his discovery of the resources that helped him. I'm delighted to be joined by Adam Jones, ex Evangelical, ⁓ will share their remarkable journey. To start us off, I would love to hear what has been capturing your attention, whether it's reading or watching or listening to something. What's on your list? Our podcast explores the windy journeys of learning and growth. Each episode, we travel the unique pathways taken by a diverse range of interesting people as they reflect We would love to hear from you. Leave us a comment or email at: hello@abelpathways.com Until next time, I'm Annabel, reminding you that there are infinite pathways to growth. May you travel yours with curiosity and courage.
Adam Jones: Well, I've been listening to a podcast that I've really been enjoying. It's called The Devil You Know, and it's by Sarah Marshall, who is pretty famous for the You're Wrong About podcast and a couple other pretty well loved podcasts. And this is about the satanic panic. And she's doing it for the CBC.
Annabel Furber: on pivotal moments in their lives that led to unexpected insights and transformation. Through these conversations, we hope to illuminate the infinite pathways for how we grow and learn. Visit our show notes for links, information about our speakers, and resources mentioned on this episode.
Adam Jones: It's right up my alley, because the 80s and 90s satanic panic corresponds with my childhood and an Evangelical cult. So it's just very like, people who are talking about it and researching it are articulating things I was living through sometimes in ways that are like even better than I can articulate my own experience. ⁓ But then She's the most compassionate incredible storyteller. Every time I listen to her recount research or story that she's written, she's really, I'm always like, why doesn't everyone like center victims like this? Why doesn't everyone think about, you know, trauma in this way? So ⁓ I'm loving it, even it's kind of a heavy subject.
Annabel Furber: It's going straight on my list. list It's right up my alley.
Adam Jones: you will love it for sure. It's also strange because there's so many ties you can make to today and the cultural moment we're in today and how we are thinking about and out groups and morality and just also like moral panics. It's a lot, it's a very rich text. ⁓
Annabel Furber: I love that. ⁓ Anything else that's captured your attention?
Adam Jones: gosh, I mean, I'm kind of in between books right now. So I'm reading my way through. I decided to read everything that Yukio Mishima has ever written. Don't really know why I'm doing that. hyperfixation, I guess, I like, that's what we're going to do for the year. And I'm most of the way through that. But I don't really have any thoughts about it because I'm trying to just like marinate.
Annabel Furber: It's cool. And is there a small joy or a pleasure that you with recently?
Adam Jones: Well, this is kind of a strange way to answer this question. But two years ago, before the new year, I think it was in The Guardian, this author writing about how she keeps a delight journal. And every day, you write down something that brought you delight. And you're trying to kind of help rewire your brain to notice moments of light, moments of joy, rather than our kind of propensity towards the, you know, setting of sad and dangerous. And I do that. You're supposed to hopefully have something that you actually thought consciously, like that's delightful. So you're kind of doing not just writing it down, but also engaging throughout the day. But 99 % of mine are like something I saw in nature. I sent to Annabel earlier pictures of the eagle that I saw on my walk. That goes in the Delight Journal a lot.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Well, apparently this eagle is quite famous. There's an eagle cam on or her. Do
Adam Jones: ⁓ This one was the male because I can recognize them now. I feel very being able to do this. ⁓ the male bald eagle is smaller. so you see that I see them both sometimes. But yes, there is a eagle cam on the Yakima River and a mutual friend of ours from college when I shared the picture on social media was like, I know this eagle. ⁓ It so cute.
Annabel Furber: love that. Well, I'm so thrilled you're here today and to chat with you and share with our listeners we went to college together. ⁓
Adam Jones: I know. I have known you since I was 18 years old, which is redacted number of years ago. No, it doesn't really matter. I was kind of about this before we started recording, but everyone likes to talk how they have these friends that you might lose touch with them over the years and you reconnect and it's just this, you can pick up like no time has passed. for us in our 20s, we were close. I mean, there was a summer we not only lived together, we worked two jobs together. Yeah, we worked for your dad and we worked at the caterer. Tiger Lily, yeah. we like 20, if there was more than 24 seven, that like how often we were ⁓ And we were great friends and we stayed close for a number of years after school. But then kind of lost touch and then ⁓
Annabel Furber: You Tiger Lily ⁓ Yeah.
Adam Jones: are so many things that we, even in that period like distance, we're both still very interested in. One of, mean, politics, books, so many that we like talk about. But one of those things was I guess, religion, the question of and particularly like high control ⁓ kind cult dynamics. ⁓ And were interested in those, I think, in some degree kind of more academically. I out of that as personal And so we have talked a lot in the time we've reconnected about those very subjects. And so you broached the idea me coming on your podcast and talking. For me, it's more out of my personal experience than out of like a professional or academic perspective. But I was like, I'll do it. I love to talk about this. ⁓
Annabel Furber: Well, it's a podcast about learning and growth and transformation. And you've been through more of that in the lifetime you've lived than most people ever will. And so I think you do have so much to share about how you were able to navigate that as you recognized that the system that you were raised in was not suited for you.
Adam Jones: Right.
Annabel Furber: and the process of how you got yourself out of it and not just like the physically out of it, but the ⁓ transformation out of a very, high control environment. My interest in this idea of like, what does it look like to have undue influence? Because we're all influenced by stuff, right? I'm in the cult of tea, I could say that. But there's a difference here, Where do you cross the line into undue influence? And I can think of nobody better to speak personally and academically, because you've studied this as well and you understand, you've had to, I think, understand it in order to untangle yourself from that kind of oppression. So I'm so thrilled chat with you about this. Do you give a quick, overview of what we're talking about more specifically and then I can ask you questions as we go.
Adam Jones: Well, sure. mean, I can talk about my particular story and background. I was born into a Evangelical family. My parents were missionaries. I grew up the Philippines mom is a second generation Evangelical. My dad was an adult convert. So they had slightly different on religion. in some ways were pretty standard of their era, baby boomer Evangelicals. In others they were a bit more liberal, a little more permissive. But because we were allowed some secular TV music, we were allowed to question up to a certain degree. And if I had been raised with my parents and grown up in ⁓ my family structure, I would have some issues that I don't have but I would also probably have a different relationship with my faith. I went to a boarding school starting at grade, and I went to same school until I graduated high school. And it was in Manila, and it was not terrible academic experience, but it was extremely fundamentalist. ⁓ And it was at era in the and ⁓ when fundamentalism was really kind of, think, and ⁓ Evangelicalism in America was really kind of amping up and becoming more like what we see today, especially in like the political sphere. So exposure to that throughout my childhood was very instrumental in shaping how I related to the question of faith certainly how I came to understand whether or not I wanted to still be a part of this group. And so I had this fundamentalist, I mean, it's truly a form of brainwashing. Before I went to school, but then at school, it was just relentless. so I have, it's a little hard to say what was, there was one thing or another that sort of breaks the spell and starts pulling you away. This isn't an original observation of mine, but one thing does go, so many other things go. And so I ⁓ talk specifically about what those first things were. But then when I was ⁓ 18 and first met Annabel and I was at Sarah Lawrence, My parents were excited for me to go to a school that wasn't a Christian school. They thought that I was strong in the faith and I'd be able to handle it, basically. But as soon as I got out of that high control environment, a of things that had been starting to unravel just burst open. And I left the church pretty much right away when I could. But it was a process for me of many, many years. And I think that's more of what we'll talk a little bit about. Where I almost had to revisit that decision to leave over and over again and leave in different ways and myself in different ways.
Annabel Furber: I'm curious, can you recall the first time you questioned system that you were in and the culture you were in?
Adam Jones: Well, so yes, It's one of things where I think we are always trying to tell ourselves stories to live. ⁓ And sometimes we to find story. So need to be clear that I'm not saying that anxiety is because of religion or because of a high-control environment. I have genetic predisposition, early traumas. I'm an anxious person for a lot of different reasons. But as a really young child, I started to experience profound anxiety around spiritual questions. There's religious scrupulosity, OCD, to use a really technical term, definitely something that I've had experience with in my own life. But it was a real revelation to me as an adult in therapy all these years later to look back at that and be able to say, I wasn't just anxious. I didn't understand what I was being told. It didn't make sense to me. And I didn't believe it. But the only way that I could experience that cognitive dissonance was through anxiety. I think that's the first ⁓ for me in leaving was just being afraid of hell. And part of me not understanding how you could have this supposedly all loving or all powerful ⁓ being was going to consign the vast majority of humankind to eternal conscious torment. Like it just didn't make sense. And of course it was very frightening and emotionally fraught for me. But there was also, I think, a part of it that was like, don't get this. And I can remember adults in my life having sit me down. ⁓ I'm sorry to laugh, but it's just one of those things where you're remembering trauma and it's... it is kind of funny, I would be trying to go to sleep and I would have a panic attack that was like causing physical, you know, shaking or like all kinds of stuff. And instead of the way that they were trying to like walk me through it was they would sit down and they'd have these theological conversations with me about like the applied versus the absolute will of God, you know. Here I am like, I gonna go to hell? They'd be like, well no, you're not gonna go to hell so long as you, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And I would just be crying, freaking ⁓ But, it's not really funny, but it's kind of how I, I just think so absurd now.
Annabel Furber: It is absurdity, yeah. ⁓
Adam Jones: Two things are happening there, like where I intellectually believe what I was being taught to believe. And also just like psychologically or therapeutically, I'm looking at that and I'm like, that is not how you help a child at that developmental to get through this. So I do look at that and I think that's the first few steps or the first experience of not feeling like I fit in with this world or this way of thinking.
Annabel Furber: were alone with these thoughts or was there a friend or something you saw on television or some other influence that had you questioning it because it feels unusual to me for that you would be questioning what should have just been like absolute truth
Adam Jones: Well, you have to remember my parents are Calvinists, so there's no such thing as like true salvation. always a nervous condition, basically. ⁓ can't know until the end whether or not saved in a lot of ways. So again, one was really able to say to me, yeah, you're OK, because if I... ⁓ as a child, as long as I stayed faithful, I would be OK. But they thought it would be lying to tell me that, oh, you're going to go to heaven. But I can say that these, and part of the reason why I mentioned the trauma in regards to all of this, too, is the first time I started having these fears at ⁓ in the early years of boarding when other things were happening for me and other emotional pressures were on and other traumas had occurred. So I think, and I thought for a long time that they were really just manifestations of the trauma that I was feeling abandoned, by my parents. And so I started to be worried that God would also abandon me ⁓ because had been encouraged to think of God as like a father or like a parental figure. it just sort of slipped, that sort of mental moved for me. And I do think that there is some validity to that for sure. But I do also think that even early on, I had questions that I couldn't articulate, and they came out sideways, a once said to me. And they out in this way of being, like, anxious about it,
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Were there any communities that you were connected to outside of the school?
Adam Jones: My parents' house in the rural Philippines was the church property. Everyone I knew ⁓ pretty was involved their church. There were other, there were people that lived in our home that worked for my parents. There were people who lived in the parsonage who worked for the church. They were all part of the church. At school, lived in a dorm with other missionary kids. We went to school and then we would go home or go to church. I knew very few people outside of the church in my early childhood.
Annabel Furber: I think it's extraordinary that you broke out. And that, you know, you, yes, okay, you came to America. That culture shock must have been ⁓ very disruptive in a way that maybe helped, but still you had to get yourself there and like, So is there something you could point to or speak to? And I love that you started talking about this, that this is not a completely linear story and even your memories of them changes. You have feels and you reinterpreted and re-understood things. I know I've done that in my life too. At one point in my life, that memory was one thing. And then later on I interpreted it as an adult and was like, that was not what happened, girl. And then the memory is altered by that understanding. ⁓
Adam Jones: there is a big... And think this is something you can relate to just because I know we both moved cultures ⁓ around Yeah, ⁓ it's really ⁓ we both... from the UK and ⁓ arrived in US. And my parents would, every fifth year, live in the United States. And it's an old holdover from how they used to do missions.
Annabel Furber: ⁓ yeah,
Adam Jones: but we would come to the States and live for a year and then go back to the Philippines. And that was a very, you're young, it's traumatic enough, but when you're older, it starts to get really traumatic. And that age, American culture is really brutal. Junior high is really tough to break into, if this is, you haven't cultures, you haven't changed schools. For me, it was just ⁓ so isolating so terrible. That was a pivotal year in my intellectual development as well, because prior to that, I had been so protected. And we came to the States, and I went to public school, and it was nothing like I had been told. It wasn't like the that they gave Evangelical kids of what it would be like to go to school in a public school situation.
Annabel Furber: I had 21 jump street.
Adam Jones: You're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. ⁓ My gosh, ⁓ realized right before we moved, I was obsessed with the movie, the Mike Myers movie, So I Married an Axe Murderer. do you remember that one? ⁓ pretty sure I thought that like, that was why I wanted to be a poet when I grew up was because I was going to like ⁓ doing snap, finger snappy, like, and somehow be able to afford a huge apartment in San Francisco ⁓ as poet.
Annabel Furber: Yeah,
Adam Jones: did have some pop culture stuff, but it was such ⁓ a steep learning curve. And indoctrination that I'd received and sort of the like guidance that I thought that I had just wasn't, wasn't sufficient for that. And it was, I so corny say this, but it's really true. At the time it was sort of post-grunge, but it was this, it was this time when everyone was talking about like being real, man. you know, like authenticity. I looked around and in my estimation at the time, a lot of the Christian kids that I was like at with seemed kind of hypocritical. Like they didn't really want to be Christian kids. They wanted to just be normal kids, which I totally understand. But at the time, I saw this as like, it was sort of like a big chink in the wall of what separates being a good Christian from being like a evil heathen. It started to fall apart there for me. And the kids, the people who welcomed me at that school were like, if you think of Freaks and Geeks it was like the freaks. know? Yeah. Right? ⁓ All a sudden, the only people who treated me like a human were smoking pot and cigarettes And so I was like, wait a minute. is like, what is morality? What is, you know, being a good person if like all of the popular kids that go to my parents church, like bully I'm not saying it's their fault that I lost my faith. That's ridiculous. ⁓ But it the experience was so different from how I had been taught to think it would happen that it really jarred me. And started asking these other questions, and authenticity became one of the really important ones to me. And the people who seemed most authentic to me were actually hostile to Christianity. And the people who seemed less authentic were the ones who professed a certain type of Christianity. so that set me on a totally different path for the rest of high school.
Annabel Furber: Because then you went back to the Philippines and you had high school to get through. And that whole time this stuff was brewing and growing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Adam Jones: And the other big thing that sort of was happening for me in high school was questions about gender and sexuality. You I, a little kid, I never wanted to play with boy toys or be like in the mud. I was kind of a little princessy kid. ⁓ And wasn't okay. You know, from early on, my dad both culturally, just from where he's from in the States and his own personal... way of being, but then also the overlay of the religiosity, the patriarchal Evangelicalism, that just wasn't OK with him. And so from a very early age, was a little bit on the outside as well.
Annabel Furber: Yeah, I was just thinking that would have given you room to see things that if you've been able to be more conforming, maybe would be harder.
Adam Jones: would have been exactly. I think about that a lot. And I think that is definitely true. And then when I got to being in high school or junior high and started feeling attraction, it was very clear to me that I was gay pretty much away. There's kind of like a few years ⁓ where I could kind of deceive myself a little bit about the question. But then it became just obvious. And so I had to start asking those questions too. Part of what fell apart for me was like their script on how it worked was so extreme that I could look at it and say, but that's not what I have experienced. But in the way that I was raised, no one is born gay. No one really is gay at all. People pervert themselves and somehow end up on this path. And I had experience that told me that that wasn't true. Like I had this firsthand experience But that really, of the extreme way that that was about and how hot that issue was me, that wasn't really a big thing for me. I didn't think a lot about that directly because it was too scary. When I was in high school, a lot of my criticism that I was able to articulate and that I think was sort of the thread... If we talk about getting out of the labyrinth, the thread that I pulled myself out of the labyrinth using was actually. Because felt not completely male as a little kid, I was curious about female experience and female perspective in the church. And it was ⁓ so awful ⁓ some of the ways that pastors would talk about women and the culture would talk about women. And so I just was really against, myself pitted against that. Anyway, intellectually, I kind of was able to think my way out of some of the extreme parts of Evangelicalism through the lens of feminism, because while it was personal, it wasn't quite as close as the question of my sexuality. So that was a little more comfortable to be fighting for my sister's sake or for like, know, of abstracted woman rather than for myself.
Annabel Furber: extraordinary. Were there classmates were struggling with their faith? Maybe not openly, because it sounds like a very high control environment where you would have been punished for that, but in private conversations or this was just all conversations in your own mind?
Adam Jones: A lot of it were conversations in my own mind. There were a few people who I had more serious conversations with. Part of the high control was, you would have a conversation about one aspect of it, I think . But you wouldn't big... I never sat down and just poured out everything that was in my mind about this. I think this was kind of my coping mechanism was I had these things that I didn't believe. ⁓ didn't believe that women couldn't serve in the and I didn't believe that like, God was really as vengeful and angry. And I would say to myself, when you leave here, you're going to find people who think like you, you know, because I knew that liberal Christians existed, but I just they weren't in my life. And so that was more my thought. But then when I left and came to Sarah Lawrence and came out, my experience was just so, was with it in a real way that I hadn't anticipated before. I guess, do you know what's gonna come before you make the choice ⁓ or make leap? ⁓
Annabel Furber: Yeah. that's such a brave thing to do. From my observations of learning about different high ⁓ organizations, there is something they share common, but never going to have an organization where there aren't people in there doubting things or questioning things. So how do you keep that as quiet as possible? And I think one of the functions I see over and over again is the isolation within it's interesting because a lot of religions in particular will talk about the beauty of the community, but the community is heavily restricted from questioning or talking about the institution itself and that becomes so isolating. And that's why I kind of asked you the question were you even able to have these conversations with others?
Adam Jones: Yeah, that was that actually was a part of it. I recently attended a school reunion. It was small. I mean, it was a small school. It was a small class and it was quite a small group of people that came to this reunion. There was a range of people there, some who are still part of an Evangelical church or community, some who are part of a liberal Christian one and some very few who had actually just completely left myself being one of them. But one of the things that was talked about a lot, and this wasn't so much in regards to questions about faith, it was more actually about questions about trauma, because a lot of the experience of moving kids and I'm not ⁓ making this this is like academically true, children in missionaries put in very dangerous situations all the time. That's just part of it. It's accepted and oftentimes sort of flaunted by the parents. They taken to war zones. They are taken to places where there's starvation. All kinds of things can happen. So the point of all that is to say, when we were together, A lot of people shared stories about trauma that had happened to them. And I heard many, many times that weekend, I had no idea other people were going through these sorts of things. I thought I was all alone. So there was a sense of isolation that all experienced, even around those questions. And I I don't really have an answer for exactly how it worked. But if I had to guess, I think it has a lot to do with the kind of indoctrination that teaches you that you're so responsible for not only your own behavior but for other people's behavior. Young girls are told that if a man looks at you with lust, that's partly your fault for wearing something that was too revealing or for showing off your body or whatever. This is something that Evangelical parents will do to their children a lot. If you are out in public and you throw a tantrum, they'll pull you aside and they'll say, imagine our neighbors who know we're Christians see you behaving like this. What's that gonna do to their relationship with God? You get told that your behavior is directly responsible for other people's and death, their ⁓ existence. you feel this tremendous responsibility. Again, for your own sins and for your own behavior, but also you're responsible for everyone around you. And so I think that is probably a big part of why we were so silent about what was going on in our own lives
Annabel Furber: I think it's really taking advantage of a sort human psychological thing there because kids are, if they feel like something they think, say or do is going to hurt another person, naturally we're born empathetic. Our brains are wired for empathy. And so really what you're describing is sort of weaponizing this beautiful, look, there are a lot of terrible things about human beings, but that isn't one of them. That's one of the nice, the aspects of ourselves. And they're weaponizing that not just against each other, but then you use that weapon against yourself too.
Adam Jones: Lovely.
Annabel Furber: There was so much limitation to what you could say or do.
Adam Jones: I mean, I've heard of people talk about it, the person that sticks out of my mind is Danny Lavery talking about this, but where you learn to be constantly judging your own mental script. Am I being holy enough right Even just like with your everyday thoughts. And so you're constantly self-censoring, even ⁓ on this fundamental psychological and interior level. That also does come out in terms of self-censorship with what you tell to other people, how you bond and share. But yeah, I mean, can't tell you. I left that weekend where I talked to all of these people. I'd gone to high school with just absolutely flabbergasted at what we'd all been through because it was really shocking. I mean, I think probably some truth to like that just in general, like we do keep some secrets, but like this just seemed really, really intense.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. I don't know all the details, but what I'm curious about here, and think folks might be interested to hear, is just like a bit more of that journey when you were of the system itself. So you weren't constantly in that environment, but you still, of course, had your whole life in that world. What were some of the pivotal things that helped really readjust to not being under that kind of influence?
Adam Jones: think of there being ⁓ experiences me leaving the church. The first is just this one at 18, 19 when I just made the decision to leave. ⁓ And the next ⁓ five I learned I read more, I made more decisions about why I didn't believe what I had been indoctrinated to believe before that. But it was many years later, almost 20 years later before I did any formal deconstruction, 15, 20 years later. And that's when I really left the in a more complete and healthy way. Like I was kind of saying earlier, I to learn about regulation, like emotional regulation in a totally new way. I had to learn about just recognizing my own body and my own feelings. And I did that through talk through the help of ⁓ professionals. And I also had tremendous progress, I guess, from doing just like formal deconstruction exercises. Like, sounds rudimentary, but it's really true. The resource I use, which is kind of a classic, and there's probably newer ones and different ones, but the one that I use is called Leaving the Fold by Marlene. I always get her last name wrong. I think it's Winell. But it's, and we link in the show notes. the specifics, but it's really just like a manual for how to deconstruct. And so, you you do these exercises, some where you talk about all the horrible things you went through. What's kind of the strange thing is you actually need to spend time thinking about the things you liked, the things that were positive, the things you want to carry with you. And then once you've done all that work, you... For me, I was really ducked up for a while because you actually look at some of the stuff that you went through you really... the story, like you were saying earlier, the stories that you've been telling yourself shift a little. So things that were funny ⁓ that were lighthearted, where you were kind of tamping down how you really felt, all that stuff comes to the top and you have to sit those things and feel things if you didn't feel them or however that's gonna work for you. For me, that's how it was. So that is a big process. I don't like to say things like, I wish I had done that earlier. That wasn't, for whatever reason, possible for me. It just wasn't how my life went. It wasn't how my brain did it. But I'm so grateful I started that work at all, because I can just see the difference between kind of making a decision to leave the church, but then actually working on some of these mental
Annabel Furber: have you noticed having done that mental intellectual work where were changing your neural networks literally, what do you notice?
Adam Jones: Well, I mean, everyone who ⁓ will have had the same kind of familial structure that I came from and particular traumas that I went through. So some of it is a little ⁓ complicated ⁓ it bleed into each other, right, like these different things. I've had to learn how to self-parent and that's been a big part of my therapeutic journey. The reason I'm bringing this up is that I noticed how afraid I still was, in the first few years after leaving. And it wasn't even just, like, fear of, like, big things. It was like I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of, like, really kind of strange things because the world was still so populated with those terrors that I had been indoctrinated with. It first started out with just accepting it and then it softened over time and I found myself less afraid and I remember having this experience where I caught myself, I was out on a walk and I wanted to touch something and I stopped myself from doing it because I was well, maybe that will hurt you or maybe that will be bad to do that. And it was just a moment of breakthrough. Where I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, that's just a stick. Like nothing bad is gonna happen. You can touch it if you want. And I actually, I was walking through a grocery store once and my hand, I was just touching stuff as I was walking by and I didn't know a lady was behind me. And she said to me, you shouldn't do that. What if one of those things bites you? I just laughed and let her do it. But what was funny was in my mind, was like, actually, I'm doing that because that's what I've been told my whole life and believe my whole life. And I'm trying to be out here living like a free person. And if it bites me, so what? was like world opened up for me. And that is another big method of control is because them, The structures tell you that when you leave, your world will fall apart. The world is really dangerous. You're going to, disaster will happen to you. Like that's one of the high control myths you're told keep you on the straight and narrow. And so that breaking apart was a really beautiful thing. The big thing that I'm trying to learn right now or that I'm trying to kind of accept is that there is no end point. I was just starting to think about what is my future goals for therapy. And I just was, at some point, actually from listening to something that Sarah Marshall said on her podcast, where I was like, wait a minute. There doesn't have to be an end point. I don't have to like get to a point where I'm like, okay, ⁓ that is actually the thinking that I was given as a child that like there's a good and a bad, there's a right and a If you do it right, God will bless you. If you do it wrong, you'll be cursed and damned. And just like basically kind of putting my middle finger up to this and saying, I'm not, I'm gonna just Heal forever because that's how long it's gonna take.
Annabel Furber: Yeah, I was speaking with an amazing person, Gunjan Koul who founded a therapeutic horticulture program. And I was chatting with her recently, we were talking about, you you just presented that in terms of like breaking through the conditioning from ⁓ the but that gets reinforced in every podcast, movie, TV show, because they have to package a beginning, middle and end. And so everywhere you turn an idea of beginning, middle and end. And you could look at us and say, well, we're born, we live and then we die. And so there's something fundamental about that too. But our internal experience of the world doesn't have that kind of ⁓ path. And we don't know where the beginning is until way later. But it's interesting to think about how that packaging, that narrative that we create is a complicated mix of purposeful and necessary, but can be detrimental and depending how you wield it, be used for control and it can be used for freedom.
Adam Jones: I think that's an important kind addendum to what I was saying. And I worry that like saying something like, I don't worry, but I don't want my saying that I don't see this journey as having like an end as being fatalistic or like something sad, know, ⁓ or discouraging for someone who might starting out on a journey of deconstruction and be like, wait, this doesn't end. You know, that ⁓ not sound very encouraging. But like you said about it being used for freedom. just like imagine the world opening up in this that you can hardly imagine when you're so closed up and so kind of with binary thinking. When it does kind of open for you, there's just so many options. ⁓
Annabel Furber: And I recognize that those messages aren't just from high control environments. And again, I see ⁓ the necessity of it in so many ways, even when I'm thinking about, you know, it helps us to understand something to do that. And so you and I had the pleasure of a amazing philosophy teacher at college. First class she had us, I don't know if you were in this one, but she had a staring at the duck rabbit.
Adam Jones: I think so. I think so.
Annabel Furber: I printed her a duck rabbit block and sent that to her. I still have it actually. But I think about that a lot because she brought it up in the sense of training your brain to hold two opposing or different ideas simultaneously and that being a skill that philosophy helps you to develop. But I think the idea of even a story, something with a beginning, we need to hold that idea of like, yes, and there is a reality that doesn't have any of those components to it.
Adam Jones: Well, the other thing I ⁓ to say about that is that you can train yourself. Meditation is probably the most common way of training your brain to be comfortable with discomfort. There are other ways you can do this, but the one that I have found most helpful is just ⁓ form of sitting meditation where you bring awareness to... your thoughts and your awareness. And that also has that beneficial quality of making our experience or helping our experience where there isn't like resolution not feel so scary. Because ⁓ recognizing it and accepting it.
Annabel Furber: I feel like I'm really working on that a lot, the idea of not presenting everything as a problem that has a solution. And I think, you you mentioned nature earlier and that resonates with me because that is such a tangible experience ⁓ of yeah, nature has problems and solutions, but also just pure chaos out there. And it's kind of scary, right? Because like the unknown, our brain is kind of trying to be careful around the unknown, who knows, maybe it's a poison berry.
Adam Jones: Right, right.
Annabel Furber: I understand why we have that, but yeah, the mental control to like what you're talking about, I think some of the therapy you've gone through and some of the practices are things I want to argue we should be teaching from the beginning.
Adam Jones: I would agree. Thank And so any freedom starts in my experience, any freedom kind of begets a little bit more and begets a little bit more.
Annabel Furber: That's right. Yeah. And you absolutely have to be aware. Another executive function skill metacognition like being being able to think about the way that you're thinking and observe the way that you're thinking. it's such a crucial skill again that needs to be taught. Yeah. Yeah. And can be easily stunted and manipulated.
Adam Jones: That's what I was thinking is like the ways in which was manipulated in my own experience and then how effort takes to shift it, you know, like once you've been trained to have a ⁓ sense of that is punitive or like kind of very rigid to that was a huge freedom for me when I was like, ⁓ you're not going to get in trouble for what you're thinking. You can think absolutely anything you want, and fine. Because I still have maintained a lot of fear around if I think the wrong thing, that will do something bad to me or to world. And not just in that magical thinking way, which I think a lot of people have whether or not you have the sort of manipulation into going that way. Some people just seem to have that fear in general. but in particular that to think the right thing all the time. It's exhausting.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. I think that your story here of breaking through it and doing the work is just extraordinary. I don't know if people realize how rare it actually is to be able to break free. And you did it on your own, friend.
Adam Jones: Oh I think what I thank you for that. It it's strange still. It doesn't feel unusual to me. It feels if goes back to this this feeling necessary. And I talked a little bit about like inner child work and stuff. But ⁓ of the profound things about this experience for me is like being able to feel to some extent like I'm finally there's finally someone holding that child version of myself's hand as he goes through these hard things and is actually listening to what he's saying. And if that resonates with you, would, if you're listening to this and that kind of thing resonates with you, or even just the fear and anxiety pervading the world around you, I think that is such a part of all of this. Just ⁓ ⁓ a small step towards accepting yourself or loving yourself or reaching out for help, whatever seems right. For people who are a little bit farther on the path, I can't doing some more formal deconstruction work. That to me is so crucial. For years, I actually felt like I didn't need to do that, that I had thought my way out of this and so I didn't need anyone else's help, thank you very much. And that's to go through that, it's just part of life. But I can tell you that the experience of the more intentional of doing it, that is crucial because are things that you don't even know about own experience that when they're shown to you, it's ⁓ such a relief for someone to name that you. And to kind of just even by naming it freeing you in that way.
Annabel Furber: What would you say looking to the future here? What are you entangled in these days?
Adam Jones: Well, I mentioned this a little earlier, sort of kind of the life's work of it all, ⁓ it just take its time, not expecting completion, Just accept even if I don't feel like I am checking all these boxes off or like doing anything like that, that there's still benefit to happening in me. And the other thing, I keep a future self journal, which ⁓ is like you just five affirmations each day about what you're kind of working on. And what I've been writing a lot in there is about my own power. And recognizing my own power and strength. you've come through a lot of adversity or is really what I mean. And you've been spending a lot of time naming that and thinking about that. Please hear me. I'm not talking about a victim mentality or any of this nonsense that people throw around. But when you've been working heavily through that, a lot of times the healing process requires you to sit with that pain and that difficulty and like you're in that and you aren't thinking about the fact that you're strong as well. You know you're not thinking about you're resilient as well. You're healing the trauma and all of this stuff. But that is the seed that's kind of buried in there too. You're also resilient. If you're here and ⁓ wanting to heal from your trauma, you're here and you're wanting to sit with these painful emotions like, you're also strong. So can you flip that around a little in your mind and think of yourself first as strong and then also as someone who's gone through something adverse? That's what I'm to ask myself right now.
Annabel Furber: You just duck rabbit yourself again Yeah, that's beautiful I love the idea of writing to your future self it's again that's distance and imagination and those are healing things I think. Yeah
Adam Jones: Yeah, totally.
Annabel Furber: What message, or if there's anything you want to add to what you've already said about somebody who is in the process ⁓ of recognizing or shifting or transforming out of undue influence type environment.
Adam Jones: Again, I did mention previously how important I think it is to do some mindful deconstruction work. other thing, though, is just like you've got to let some of it is just letting things come out as they come out, know, like letting go a little bit, you've been so pressured to think the right way, to do the right thing, that it's okay if you just sort of like let things bubble up for a while and let things kind of come out as they do. There's a book with a ⁓ kind of title but it's not, it's called Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander and it's his autobiography where he's talking about coming out of very ultra-orthodox Judaism. I read that around 24, 25, and it was a huge influence on my life because, again, it put to words some of the things that I had been through and didn't have words for, even though it was different than my specific experience. And one of the things that he identified that was so profound for me was the anger, the anger that I felt. And it's most bizarre form of anger. It's anger that God doesn't exist. Like when you stop believing in God, you're actually really angry that this person who you prayed to for me 18, 19 years, you believed was guiding your every move, in charge of atomic physics. Suddenly that person doesn't exist anymore and you are angry. And I'm saying this more as an example of the kind of emotion that might come up. For me, this was a phase I had to go through. Just it be. I to let it be even at that point. I really wasn't sure what to do with it. Part of my message is just these feelings will come. So seek help so that you can like deal with them but also we do have to just accept that these big emotions will come as we are dealing with these big seismic shifts and think it's helpful to seek professional help to learn tools that will help you with it but the thing goes along with that is also just accepting that they will erupt for you and it doesn't have to be sad and scary and terrible. That's not what I'm saying. But you've been sitting on a lot of stuff. And guess that's why I'm saying get someone to help you through these really big things. Because you shouldn't have to be alone. And you shouldn't have to feel alone in this kind of situation. And you aren't alone. That's what I'm saying. There's so many people who have been through this, who have experienced exactly what you're feeling, even though the interior feeling is like, who could know, like, how could anyone else understand this? But as I would just said, like, I read a book, someone had been through it, someone put to page, like, what I had experienced. So reach out.
Annabel Furber: Yeah.
Adam Jones: And the first step is just it to yourself and practice saying that I feel this and even if it's just hearing how you judge yourself for those things, like if you can do that, if you can start there, that's a huge step towards healing is A, feeling it and B, being attentive to how that, how you're responding to just your emotions. Because remember your emotions are you know, the Buddhist thing is like clouds over the sky. They're not you. They're not ⁓ you to do anything. They just are. And so acknowledge and accept them. That's like you were saying, hard for all of us. It's not just hard for people who have come out of a high control environment. It's not just hard for people who have trauma. It's not just hard for men or women and it's hard for everyone, but it is hard. ⁓ Just one ⁓ that point about emotions too is like, versus there's also the often that kind of divided body and too. We talk, you know, that's kind of the classic neoplatonic nonsense that we live in our and think in our Like they're not just incredibly enmeshed, but if you come from a high control environment that views the body as like the repository for sin. That is part of the work that you're doing is learning to feel your body and welcome those sensations and not just live in your brain. And that's been a big thing for me is trying to split those two things, emotion versus intellect, physical sensation versus thought. Integrate and welcome it all.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Viva la revoluçion! Basically what we've been talking about today is the patriarchy.
Adam Jones: Pretty much.
Annabel Furber: So I'll end here with asking you if there's, I have such a great reading list from you here to add, but is there an organization, a group, or anyone that you just wanna give a shout out to?
Adam Jones: Well, I mean, I have done a lot of of thinking through ex-vangelical groups. If you even just Google this, you'll find a bunch of resources, podcasts, and who think about it. The academic Chrissy Stroop has been really important. A lot of the things she's written have influenced my ⁓ thinking about it. The books that I mentioned earlier, Jesus and John Wayne, really good. And then again, if you don't have access to help or therapy, you just wanna do some work to deconstruct that book, Leaving the Fold, will be a marvelous tool for you, even if you don't have as many resources as some. That book truly changed my life. She identifies in terms of coercive control and undoing things, not only is she able to identify them, but she has some suggestions for how to work through, for those of us who lived through, you know, like leaving them, the ways to leave. And again, one of the important things is what are the positive things that you had in your life? Like, what are some of the strengths that you can bring from these experiences.
Annabel Furber: And I actually think that's an example of the power of narrative, where it is healing and not harming. Well, thank you so much, Adam. Thank you. It was, it's going in my new delight journal. delights to chat with you today. Thank you for sharing.
Adam Jones: ⁓ thank you, Annabel
Adam Jones: Well, I've been listening to a podcast that I've really been enjoying. It's called The Devil You Know, and it's by Sarah Marshall, who is pretty famous for the You're Wrong About podcast and a couple other pretty well loved podcasts. And this is about the satanic panic. And she's doing it for the CBC.
Annabel Furber: on pivotal moments in their lives that led to unexpected insights and transformation. Through these conversations, we hope to illuminate the infinite pathways for how we grow and learn. Visit our show notes for links, information about our speakers, and resources mentioned on this episode.
Adam Jones: It's right up my alley, because the 80s and 90s satanic panic corresponds with my childhood and an Evangelical cult. So it's just very like, people who are talking about it and researching it are articulating things I was living through sometimes in ways that are like even better than I can articulate my own experience. ⁓ But then She's the most compassionate incredible storyteller. Every time I listen to her recount research or story that she's written, she's really, I'm always like, why doesn't everyone like center victims like this? Why doesn't everyone think about, you know, trauma in this way? So ⁓ I'm loving it, even it's kind of a heavy subject.
Annabel Furber: It's going straight on my list. list It's right up my alley.
Adam Jones: you will love it for sure. It's also strange because there's so many ties you can make to today and the cultural moment we're in today and how we are thinking about and out groups and morality and just also like moral panics. It's a lot, it's a very rich text. ⁓
Annabel Furber: I love that. ⁓ Anything else that's captured your attention?
Adam Jones: gosh, I mean, I'm kind of in between books right now. So I'm reading my way through. I decided to read everything that Yukio Mishima has ever written. Don't really know why I'm doing that. hyperfixation, I guess, I like, that's what we're going to do for the year. And I'm most of the way through that. But I don't really have any thoughts about it because I'm trying to just like marinate.
Annabel Furber: It's cool. And is there a small joy or a pleasure that you with recently?
Adam Jones: Well, this is kind of a strange way to answer this question. But two years ago, before the new year, I think it was in The Guardian, this author writing about how she keeps a delight journal. And every day, you write down something that brought you delight. And you're trying to kind of help rewire your brain to notice moments of light, moments of joy, rather than our kind of propensity towards the, you know, setting of sad and dangerous. And I do that. You're supposed to hopefully have something that you actually thought consciously, like that's delightful. So you're kind of doing not just writing it down, but also engaging throughout the day. But 99 % of mine are like something I saw in nature. I sent to Annabel earlier pictures of the eagle that I saw on my walk. That goes in the Delight Journal a lot.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Well, apparently this eagle is quite famous. There's an eagle cam on or her. Do
Adam Jones: ⁓ This one was the male because I can recognize them now. I feel very being able to do this. ⁓ the male bald eagle is smaller. so you see that I see them both sometimes. But yes, there is a eagle cam on the Yakima River and a mutual friend of ours from college when I shared the picture on social media was like, I know this eagle. ⁓ It so cute.
Annabel Furber: love that. Well, I'm so thrilled you're here today and to chat with you and share with our listeners we went to college together. ⁓
Adam Jones: I know. I have known you since I was 18 years old, which is redacted number of years ago. No, it doesn't really matter. I was kind of about this before we started recording, but everyone likes to talk how they have these friends that you might lose touch with them over the years and you reconnect and it's just this, you can pick up like no time has passed. for us in our 20s, we were close. I mean, there was a summer we not only lived together, we worked two jobs together. Yeah, we worked for your dad and we worked at the caterer. Tiger Lily, yeah. we like 20, if there was more than 24 seven, that like how often we were ⁓ And we were great friends and we stayed close for a number of years after school. But then kind of lost touch and then ⁓
Annabel Furber: You Tiger Lily ⁓ Yeah.
Adam Jones: are so many things that we, even in that period like distance, we're both still very interested in. One of, mean, politics, books, so many that we like talk about. But one of those things was I guess, religion, the question of and particularly like high control ⁓ kind cult dynamics. ⁓ And were interested in those, I think, in some degree kind of more academically. I out of that as personal And so we have talked a lot in the time we've reconnected about those very subjects. And so you broached the idea me coming on your podcast and talking. For me, it's more out of my personal experience than out of like a professional or academic perspective. But I was like, I'll do it. I love to talk about this. ⁓
Annabel Furber: Well, it's a podcast about learning and growth and transformation. And you've been through more of that in the lifetime you've lived than most people ever will. And so I think you do have so much to share about how you were able to navigate that as you recognized that the system that you were raised in was not suited for you.
Adam Jones: Right.
Annabel Furber: and the process of how you got yourself out of it and not just like the physically out of it, but the ⁓ transformation out of a very, high control environment. My interest in this idea of like, what does it look like to have undue influence? Because we're all influenced by stuff, right? I'm in the cult of tea, I could say that. But there's a difference here, Where do you cross the line into undue influence? And I can think of nobody better to speak personally and academically, because you've studied this as well and you understand, you've had to, I think, understand it in order to untangle yourself from that kind of oppression. So I'm so thrilled chat with you about this. Do you give a quick, overview of what we're talking about more specifically and then I can ask you questions as we go.
Adam Jones: Well, sure. mean, I can talk about my particular story and background. I was born into a Evangelical family. My parents were missionaries. I grew up the Philippines mom is a second generation Evangelical. My dad was an adult convert. So they had slightly different on religion. in some ways were pretty standard of their era, baby boomer Evangelicals. In others they were a bit more liberal, a little more permissive. But because we were allowed some secular TV music, we were allowed to question up to a certain degree. And if I had been raised with my parents and grown up in ⁓ my family structure, I would have some issues that I don't have but I would also probably have a different relationship with my faith. I went to a boarding school starting at grade, and I went to same school until I graduated high school. And it was in Manila, and it was not terrible academic experience, but it was extremely fundamentalist. ⁓ And it was at era in the and ⁓ when fundamentalism was really kind of, think, and ⁓ Evangelicalism in America was really kind of amping up and becoming more like what we see today, especially in like the political sphere. So exposure to that throughout my childhood was very instrumental in shaping how I related to the question of faith certainly how I came to understand whether or not I wanted to still be a part of this group. And so I had this fundamentalist, I mean, it's truly a form of brainwashing. Before I went to school, but then at school, it was just relentless. so I have, it's a little hard to say what was, there was one thing or another that sort of breaks the spell and starts pulling you away. This isn't an original observation of mine, but one thing does go, so many other things go. And so I ⁓ talk specifically about what those first things were. But then when I was ⁓ 18 and first met Annabel and I was at Sarah Lawrence, My parents were excited for me to go to a school that wasn't a Christian school. They thought that I was strong in the faith and I'd be able to handle it, basically. But as soon as I got out of that high control environment, a of things that had been starting to unravel just burst open. And I left the church pretty much right away when I could. But it was a process for me of many, many years. And I think that's more of what we'll talk a little bit about. Where I almost had to revisit that decision to leave over and over again and leave in different ways and myself in different ways.
Annabel Furber: I'm curious, can you recall the first time you questioned system that you were in and the culture you were in?
Adam Jones: Well, so yes, It's one of things where I think we are always trying to tell ourselves stories to live. ⁓ And sometimes we to find story. So need to be clear that I'm not saying that anxiety is because of religion or because of a high-control environment. I have genetic predisposition, early traumas. I'm an anxious person for a lot of different reasons. But as a really young child, I started to experience profound anxiety around spiritual questions. There's religious scrupulosity, OCD, to use a really technical term, definitely something that I've had experience with in my own life. But it was a real revelation to me as an adult in therapy all these years later to look back at that and be able to say, I wasn't just anxious. I didn't understand what I was being told. It didn't make sense to me. And I didn't believe it. But the only way that I could experience that cognitive dissonance was through anxiety. I think that's the first ⁓ for me in leaving was just being afraid of hell. And part of me not understanding how you could have this supposedly all loving or all powerful ⁓ being was going to consign the vast majority of humankind to eternal conscious torment. Like it just didn't make sense. And of course it was very frightening and emotionally fraught for me. But there was also, I think, a part of it that was like, don't get this. And I can remember adults in my life having sit me down. ⁓ I'm sorry to laugh, but it's just one of those things where you're remembering trauma and it's... it is kind of funny, I would be trying to go to sleep and I would have a panic attack that was like causing physical, you know, shaking or like all kinds of stuff. And instead of the way that they were trying to like walk me through it was they would sit down and they'd have these theological conversations with me about like the applied versus the absolute will of God, you know. Here I am like, I gonna go to hell? They'd be like, well no, you're not gonna go to hell so long as you, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And I would just be crying, freaking ⁓ But, it's not really funny, but it's kind of how I, I just think so absurd now.
Annabel Furber: It is absurdity, yeah. ⁓
Adam Jones: Two things are happening there, like where I intellectually believe what I was being taught to believe. And also just like psychologically or therapeutically, I'm looking at that and I'm like, that is not how you help a child at that developmental to get through this. So I do look at that and I think that's the first few steps or the first experience of not feeling like I fit in with this world or this way of thinking.
Annabel Furber: were alone with these thoughts or was there a friend or something you saw on television or some other influence that had you questioning it because it feels unusual to me for that you would be questioning what should have just been like absolute truth
Adam Jones: Well, you have to remember my parents are Calvinists, so there's no such thing as like true salvation. always a nervous condition, basically. ⁓ can't know until the end whether or not saved in a lot of ways. So again, one was really able to say to me, yeah, you're OK, because if I... ⁓ as a child, as long as I stayed faithful, I would be OK. But they thought it would be lying to tell me that, oh, you're going to go to heaven. But I can say that these, and part of the reason why I mentioned the trauma in regards to all of this, too, is the first time I started having these fears at ⁓ in the early years of boarding when other things were happening for me and other emotional pressures were on and other traumas had occurred. So I think, and I thought for a long time that they were really just manifestations of the trauma that I was feeling abandoned, by my parents. And so I started to be worried that God would also abandon me ⁓ because had been encouraged to think of God as like a father or like a parental figure. it just sort of slipped, that sort of mental moved for me. And I do think that there is some validity to that for sure. But I do also think that even early on, I had questions that I couldn't articulate, and they came out sideways, a once said to me. And they out in this way of being, like, anxious about it,
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Were there any communities that you were connected to outside of the school?
Adam Jones: My parents' house in the rural Philippines was the church property. Everyone I knew ⁓ pretty was involved their church. There were other, there were people that lived in our home that worked for my parents. There were people who lived in the parsonage who worked for the church. They were all part of the church. At school, lived in a dorm with other missionary kids. We went to school and then we would go home or go to church. I knew very few people outside of the church in my early childhood.
Annabel Furber: I think it's extraordinary that you broke out. And that, you know, you, yes, okay, you came to America. That culture shock must have been ⁓ very disruptive in a way that maybe helped, but still you had to get yourself there and like, So is there something you could point to or speak to? And I love that you started talking about this, that this is not a completely linear story and even your memories of them changes. You have feels and you reinterpreted and re-understood things. I know I've done that in my life too. At one point in my life, that memory was one thing. And then later on I interpreted it as an adult and was like, that was not what happened, girl. And then the memory is altered by that understanding. ⁓
Adam Jones: there is a big... And think this is something you can relate to just because I know we both moved cultures ⁓ around Yeah, ⁓ it's really ⁓ we both... from the UK and ⁓ arrived in US. And my parents would, every fifth year, live in the United States. And it's an old holdover from how they used to do missions.
Annabel Furber: ⁓ yeah,
Adam Jones: but we would come to the States and live for a year and then go back to the Philippines. And that was a very, you're young, it's traumatic enough, but when you're older, it starts to get really traumatic. And that age, American culture is really brutal. Junior high is really tough to break into, if this is, you haven't cultures, you haven't changed schools. For me, it was just ⁓ so isolating so terrible. That was a pivotal year in my intellectual development as well, because prior to that, I had been so protected. And we came to the States, and I went to public school, and it was nothing like I had been told. It wasn't like the that they gave Evangelical kids of what it would be like to go to school in a public school situation.
Annabel Furber: I had 21 jump street.
Adam Jones: You're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. ⁓ My gosh, ⁓ realized right before we moved, I was obsessed with the movie, the Mike Myers movie, So I Married an Axe Murderer. do you remember that one? ⁓ pretty sure I thought that like, that was why I wanted to be a poet when I grew up was because I was going to like ⁓ doing snap, finger snappy, like, and somehow be able to afford a huge apartment in San Francisco ⁓ as poet.
Annabel Furber: Yeah,
Adam Jones: did have some pop culture stuff, but it was such ⁓ a steep learning curve. And indoctrination that I'd received and sort of the like guidance that I thought that I had just wasn't, wasn't sufficient for that. And it was, I so corny say this, but it's really true. At the time it was sort of post-grunge, but it was this, it was this time when everyone was talking about like being real, man. you know, like authenticity. I looked around and in my estimation at the time, a lot of the Christian kids that I was like at with seemed kind of hypocritical. Like they didn't really want to be Christian kids. They wanted to just be normal kids, which I totally understand. But at the time, I saw this as like, it was sort of like a big chink in the wall of what separates being a good Christian from being like a evil heathen. It started to fall apart there for me. And the kids, the people who welcomed me at that school were like, if you think of Freaks and Geeks it was like the freaks. know? Yeah. Right? ⁓ All a sudden, the only people who treated me like a human were smoking pot and cigarettes And so I was like, wait a minute. is like, what is morality? What is, you know, being a good person if like all of the popular kids that go to my parents church, like bully I'm not saying it's their fault that I lost my faith. That's ridiculous. ⁓ But it the experience was so different from how I had been taught to think it would happen that it really jarred me. And started asking these other questions, and authenticity became one of the really important ones to me. And the people who seemed most authentic to me were actually hostile to Christianity. And the people who seemed less authentic were the ones who professed a certain type of Christianity. so that set me on a totally different path for the rest of high school.
Annabel Furber: Because then you went back to the Philippines and you had high school to get through. And that whole time this stuff was brewing and growing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Adam Jones: And the other big thing that sort of was happening for me in high school was questions about gender and sexuality. You I, a little kid, I never wanted to play with boy toys or be like in the mud. I was kind of a little princessy kid. ⁓ And wasn't okay. You know, from early on, my dad both culturally, just from where he's from in the States and his own personal... way of being, but then also the overlay of the religiosity, the patriarchal Evangelicalism, that just wasn't OK with him. And so from a very early age, was a little bit on the outside as well.
Annabel Furber: Yeah, I was just thinking that would have given you room to see things that if you've been able to be more conforming, maybe would be harder.
Adam Jones: would have been exactly. I think about that a lot. And I think that is definitely true. And then when I got to being in high school or junior high and started feeling attraction, it was very clear to me that I was gay pretty much away. There's kind of like a few years ⁓ where I could kind of deceive myself a little bit about the question. But then it became just obvious. And so I had to start asking those questions too. Part of what fell apart for me was like their script on how it worked was so extreme that I could look at it and say, but that's not what I have experienced. But in the way that I was raised, no one is born gay. No one really is gay at all. People pervert themselves and somehow end up on this path. And I had experience that told me that that wasn't true. Like I had this firsthand experience But that really, of the extreme way that that was about and how hot that issue was me, that wasn't really a big thing for me. I didn't think a lot about that directly because it was too scary. When I was in high school, a lot of my criticism that I was able to articulate and that I think was sort of the thread... If we talk about getting out of the labyrinth, the thread that I pulled myself out of the labyrinth using was actually. Because felt not completely male as a little kid, I was curious about female experience and female perspective in the church. And it was ⁓ so awful ⁓ some of the ways that pastors would talk about women and the culture would talk about women. And so I just was really against, myself pitted against that. Anyway, intellectually, I kind of was able to think my way out of some of the extreme parts of Evangelicalism through the lens of feminism, because while it was personal, it wasn't quite as close as the question of my sexuality. So that was a little more comfortable to be fighting for my sister's sake or for like, know, of abstracted woman rather than for myself.
Annabel Furber: extraordinary. Were there classmates were struggling with their faith? Maybe not openly, because it sounds like a very high control environment where you would have been punished for that, but in private conversations or this was just all conversations in your own mind?
Adam Jones: A lot of it were conversations in my own mind. There were a few people who I had more serious conversations with. Part of the high control was, you would have a conversation about one aspect of it, I think . But you wouldn't big... I never sat down and just poured out everything that was in my mind about this. I think this was kind of my coping mechanism was I had these things that I didn't believe. ⁓ didn't believe that women couldn't serve in the and I didn't believe that like, God was really as vengeful and angry. And I would say to myself, when you leave here, you're going to find people who think like you, you know, because I knew that liberal Christians existed, but I just they weren't in my life. And so that was more my thought. But then when I left and came to Sarah Lawrence and came out, my experience was just so, was with it in a real way that I hadn't anticipated before. I guess, do you know what's gonna come before you make the choice ⁓ or make leap? ⁓
Annabel Furber: Yeah. that's such a brave thing to do. From my observations of learning about different high ⁓ organizations, there is something they share common, but never going to have an organization where there aren't people in there doubting things or questioning things. So how do you keep that as quiet as possible? And I think one of the functions I see over and over again is the isolation within it's interesting because a lot of religions in particular will talk about the beauty of the community, but the community is heavily restricted from questioning or talking about the institution itself and that becomes so isolating. And that's why I kind of asked you the question were you even able to have these conversations with others?
Adam Jones: Yeah, that was that actually was a part of it. I recently attended a school reunion. It was small. I mean, it was a small school. It was a small class and it was quite a small group of people that came to this reunion. There was a range of people there, some who are still part of an Evangelical church or community, some who are part of a liberal Christian one and some very few who had actually just completely left myself being one of them. But one of the things that was talked about a lot, and this wasn't so much in regards to questions about faith, it was more actually about questions about trauma, because a lot of the experience of moving kids and I'm not ⁓ making this this is like academically true, children in missionaries put in very dangerous situations all the time. That's just part of it. It's accepted and oftentimes sort of flaunted by the parents. They taken to war zones. They are taken to places where there's starvation. All kinds of things can happen. So the point of all that is to say, when we were together, A lot of people shared stories about trauma that had happened to them. And I heard many, many times that weekend, I had no idea other people were going through these sorts of things. I thought I was all alone. So there was a sense of isolation that all experienced, even around those questions. And I I don't really have an answer for exactly how it worked. But if I had to guess, I think it has a lot to do with the kind of indoctrination that teaches you that you're so responsible for not only your own behavior but for other people's behavior. Young girls are told that if a man looks at you with lust, that's partly your fault for wearing something that was too revealing or for showing off your body or whatever. This is something that Evangelical parents will do to their children a lot. If you are out in public and you throw a tantrum, they'll pull you aside and they'll say, imagine our neighbors who know we're Christians see you behaving like this. What's that gonna do to their relationship with God? You get told that your behavior is directly responsible for other people's and death, their ⁓ existence. you feel this tremendous responsibility. Again, for your own sins and for your own behavior, but also you're responsible for everyone around you. And so I think that is probably a big part of why we were so silent about what was going on in our own lives
Annabel Furber: I think it's really taking advantage of a sort human psychological thing there because kids are, if they feel like something they think, say or do is going to hurt another person, naturally we're born empathetic. Our brains are wired for empathy. And so really what you're describing is sort of weaponizing this beautiful, look, there are a lot of terrible things about human beings, but that isn't one of them. That's one of the nice, the aspects of ourselves. And they're weaponizing that not just against each other, but then you use that weapon against yourself too.
Adam Jones: Lovely.
Annabel Furber: There was so much limitation to what you could say or do.
Adam Jones: I mean, I've heard of people talk about it, the person that sticks out of my mind is Danny Lavery talking about this, but where you learn to be constantly judging your own mental script. Am I being holy enough right Even just like with your everyday thoughts. And so you're constantly self-censoring, even ⁓ on this fundamental psychological and interior level. That also does come out in terms of self-censorship with what you tell to other people, how you bond and share. But yeah, I mean, can't tell you. I left that weekend where I talked to all of these people. I'd gone to high school with just absolutely flabbergasted at what we'd all been through because it was really shocking. I mean, I think probably some truth to like that just in general, like we do keep some secrets, but like this just seemed really, really intense.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. I don't know all the details, but what I'm curious about here, and think folks might be interested to hear, is just like a bit more of that journey when you were of the system itself. So you weren't constantly in that environment, but you still, of course, had your whole life in that world. What were some of the pivotal things that helped really readjust to not being under that kind of influence?
Adam Jones: think of there being ⁓ experiences me leaving the church. The first is just this one at 18, 19 when I just made the decision to leave. ⁓ And the next ⁓ five I learned I read more, I made more decisions about why I didn't believe what I had been indoctrinated to believe before that. But it was many years later, almost 20 years later before I did any formal deconstruction, 15, 20 years later. And that's when I really left the in a more complete and healthy way. Like I was kind of saying earlier, I to learn about regulation, like emotional regulation in a totally new way. I had to learn about just recognizing my own body and my own feelings. And I did that through talk through the help of ⁓ professionals. And I also had tremendous progress, I guess, from doing just like formal deconstruction exercises. Like, sounds rudimentary, but it's really true. The resource I use, which is kind of a classic, and there's probably newer ones and different ones, but the one that I use is called Leaving the Fold by Marlene. I always get her last name wrong. I think it's Winell. But it's, and we link in the show notes. the specifics, but it's really just like a manual for how to deconstruct. And so, you you do these exercises, some where you talk about all the horrible things you went through. What's kind of the strange thing is you actually need to spend time thinking about the things you liked, the things that were positive, the things you want to carry with you. And then once you've done all that work, you... For me, I was really ducked up for a while because you actually look at some of the stuff that you went through you really... the story, like you were saying earlier, the stories that you've been telling yourself shift a little. So things that were funny ⁓ that were lighthearted, where you were kind of tamping down how you really felt, all that stuff comes to the top and you have to sit those things and feel things if you didn't feel them or however that's gonna work for you. For me, that's how it was. So that is a big process. I don't like to say things like, I wish I had done that earlier. That wasn't, for whatever reason, possible for me. It just wasn't how my life went. It wasn't how my brain did it. But I'm so grateful I started that work at all, because I can just see the difference between kind of making a decision to leave the church, but then actually working on some of these mental
Annabel Furber: have you noticed having done that mental intellectual work where were changing your neural networks literally, what do you notice?
Adam Jones: Well, I mean, everyone who ⁓ will have had the same kind of familial structure that I came from and particular traumas that I went through. So some of it is a little ⁓ complicated ⁓ it bleed into each other, right, like these different things. I've had to learn how to self-parent and that's been a big part of my therapeutic journey. The reason I'm bringing this up is that I noticed how afraid I still was, in the first few years after leaving. And it wasn't even just, like, fear of, like, big things. It was like I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of, like, really kind of strange things because the world was still so populated with those terrors that I had been indoctrinated with. It first started out with just accepting it and then it softened over time and I found myself less afraid and I remember having this experience where I caught myself, I was out on a walk and I wanted to touch something and I stopped myself from doing it because I was well, maybe that will hurt you or maybe that will be bad to do that. And it was just a moment of breakthrough. Where I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, that's just a stick. Like nothing bad is gonna happen. You can touch it if you want. And I actually, I was walking through a grocery store once and my hand, I was just touching stuff as I was walking by and I didn't know a lady was behind me. And she said to me, you shouldn't do that. What if one of those things bites you? I just laughed and let her do it. But what was funny was in my mind, was like, actually, I'm doing that because that's what I've been told my whole life and believe my whole life. And I'm trying to be out here living like a free person. And if it bites me, so what? was like world opened up for me. And that is another big method of control is because them, The structures tell you that when you leave, your world will fall apart. The world is really dangerous. You're going to, disaster will happen to you. Like that's one of the high control myths you're told keep you on the straight and narrow. And so that breaking apart was a really beautiful thing. The big thing that I'm trying to learn right now or that I'm trying to kind of accept is that there is no end point. I was just starting to think about what is my future goals for therapy. And I just was, at some point, actually from listening to something that Sarah Marshall said on her podcast, where I was like, wait a minute. There doesn't have to be an end point. I don't have to like get to a point where I'm like, okay, ⁓ that is actually the thinking that I was given as a child that like there's a good and a bad, there's a right and a If you do it right, God will bless you. If you do it wrong, you'll be cursed and damned. And just like basically kind of putting my middle finger up to this and saying, I'm not, I'm gonna just Heal forever because that's how long it's gonna take.
Annabel Furber: Yeah, I was speaking with an amazing person, Gunjan Koul who founded a therapeutic horticulture program. And I was chatting with her recently, we were talking about, you you just presented that in terms of like breaking through the conditioning from ⁓ the but that gets reinforced in every podcast, movie, TV show, because they have to package a beginning, middle and end. And so everywhere you turn an idea of beginning, middle and end. And you could look at us and say, well, we're born, we live and then we die. And so there's something fundamental about that too. But our internal experience of the world doesn't have that kind of ⁓ path. And we don't know where the beginning is until way later. But it's interesting to think about how that packaging, that narrative that we create is a complicated mix of purposeful and necessary, but can be detrimental and depending how you wield it, be used for control and it can be used for freedom.
Adam Jones: I think that's an important kind addendum to what I was saying. And I worry that like saying something like, I don't worry, but I don't want my saying that I don't see this journey as having like an end as being fatalistic or like something sad, know, ⁓ or discouraging for someone who might starting out on a journey of deconstruction and be like, wait, this doesn't end. You know, that ⁓ not sound very encouraging. But like you said about it being used for freedom. just like imagine the world opening up in this that you can hardly imagine when you're so closed up and so kind of with binary thinking. When it does kind of open for you, there's just so many options. ⁓
Annabel Furber: And I recognize that those messages aren't just from high control environments. And again, I see ⁓ the necessity of it in so many ways, even when I'm thinking about, you know, it helps us to understand something to do that. And so you and I had the pleasure of a amazing philosophy teacher at college. First class she had us, I don't know if you were in this one, but she had a staring at the duck rabbit.
Adam Jones: I think so. I think so.
Annabel Furber: I printed her a duck rabbit block and sent that to her. I still have it actually. But I think about that a lot because she brought it up in the sense of training your brain to hold two opposing or different ideas simultaneously and that being a skill that philosophy helps you to develop. But I think the idea of even a story, something with a beginning, we need to hold that idea of like, yes, and there is a reality that doesn't have any of those components to it.
Adam Jones: Well, the other thing I ⁓ to say about that is that you can train yourself. Meditation is probably the most common way of training your brain to be comfortable with discomfort. There are other ways you can do this, but the one that I have found most helpful is just ⁓ form of sitting meditation where you bring awareness to... your thoughts and your awareness. And that also has that beneficial quality of making our experience or helping our experience where there isn't like resolution not feel so scary. Because ⁓ recognizing it and accepting it.
Annabel Furber: I feel like I'm really working on that a lot, the idea of not presenting everything as a problem that has a solution. And I think, you you mentioned nature earlier and that resonates with me because that is such a tangible experience ⁓ of yeah, nature has problems and solutions, but also just pure chaos out there. And it's kind of scary, right? Because like the unknown, our brain is kind of trying to be careful around the unknown, who knows, maybe it's a poison berry.
Adam Jones: Right, right.
Annabel Furber: I understand why we have that, but yeah, the mental control to like what you're talking about, I think some of the therapy you've gone through and some of the practices are things I want to argue we should be teaching from the beginning.
Adam Jones: I would agree. Thank And so any freedom starts in my experience, any freedom kind of begets a little bit more and begets a little bit more.
Annabel Furber: That's right. Yeah. And you absolutely have to be aware. Another executive function skill metacognition like being being able to think about the way that you're thinking and observe the way that you're thinking. it's such a crucial skill again that needs to be taught. Yeah. Yeah. And can be easily stunted and manipulated.
Adam Jones: That's what I was thinking is like the ways in which was manipulated in my own experience and then how effort takes to shift it, you know, like once you've been trained to have a ⁓ sense of that is punitive or like kind of very rigid to that was a huge freedom for me when I was like, ⁓ you're not going to get in trouble for what you're thinking. You can think absolutely anything you want, and fine. Because I still have maintained a lot of fear around if I think the wrong thing, that will do something bad to me or to world. And not just in that magical thinking way, which I think a lot of people have whether or not you have the sort of manipulation into going that way. Some people just seem to have that fear in general. but in particular that to think the right thing all the time. It's exhausting.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. I think that your story here of breaking through it and doing the work is just extraordinary. I don't know if people realize how rare it actually is to be able to break free. And you did it on your own, friend.
Adam Jones: Oh I think what I thank you for that. It it's strange still. It doesn't feel unusual to me. It feels if goes back to this this feeling necessary. And I talked a little bit about like inner child work and stuff. But ⁓ of the profound things about this experience for me is like being able to feel to some extent like I'm finally there's finally someone holding that child version of myself's hand as he goes through these hard things and is actually listening to what he's saying. And if that resonates with you, would, if you're listening to this and that kind of thing resonates with you, or even just the fear and anxiety pervading the world around you, I think that is such a part of all of this. Just ⁓ ⁓ a small step towards accepting yourself or loving yourself or reaching out for help, whatever seems right. For people who are a little bit farther on the path, I can't doing some more formal deconstruction work. That to me is so crucial. For years, I actually felt like I didn't need to do that, that I had thought my way out of this and so I didn't need anyone else's help, thank you very much. And that's to go through that, it's just part of life. But I can tell you that the experience of the more intentional of doing it, that is crucial because are things that you don't even know about own experience that when they're shown to you, it's ⁓ such a relief for someone to name that you. And to kind of just even by naming it freeing you in that way.
Annabel Furber: What would you say looking to the future here? What are you entangled in these days?
Adam Jones: Well, I mentioned this a little earlier, sort of kind of the life's work of it all, ⁓ it just take its time, not expecting completion, Just accept even if I don't feel like I am checking all these boxes off or like doing anything like that, that there's still benefit to happening in me. And the other thing, I keep a future self journal, which ⁓ is like you just five affirmations each day about what you're kind of working on. And what I've been writing a lot in there is about my own power. And recognizing my own power and strength. you've come through a lot of adversity or is really what I mean. And you've been spending a lot of time naming that and thinking about that. Please hear me. I'm not talking about a victim mentality or any of this nonsense that people throw around. But when you've been working heavily through that, a lot of times the healing process requires you to sit with that pain and that difficulty and like you're in that and you aren't thinking about the fact that you're strong as well. You know you're not thinking about you're resilient as well. You're healing the trauma and all of this stuff. But that is the seed that's kind of buried in there too. You're also resilient. If you're here and ⁓ wanting to heal from your trauma, you're here and you're wanting to sit with these painful emotions like, you're also strong. So can you flip that around a little in your mind and think of yourself first as strong and then also as someone who's gone through something adverse? That's what I'm to ask myself right now.
Annabel Furber: You just duck rabbit yourself again Yeah, that's beautiful I love the idea of writing to your future self it's again that's distance and imagination and those are healing things I think. Yeah
Adam Jones: Yeah, totally.
Annabel Furber: What message, or if there's anything you want to add to what you've already said about somebody who is in the process ⁓ of recognizing or shifting or transforming out of undue influence type environment.
Adam Jones: Again, I did mention previously how important I think it is to do some mindful deconstruction work. other thing, though, is just like you've got to let some of it is just letting things come out as they come out, know, like letting go a little bit, you've been so pressured to think the right way, to do the right thing, that it's okay if you just sort of like let things bubble up for a while and let things kind of come out as they do. There's a book with a ⁓ kind of title but it's not, it's called Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander and it's his autobiography where he's talking about coming out of very ultra-orthodox Judaism. I read that around 24, 25, and it was a huge influence on my life because, again, it put to words some of the things that I had been through and didn't have words for, even though it was different than my specific experience. And one of the things that he identified that was so profound for me was the anger, the anger that I felt. And it's most bizarre form of anger. It's anger that God doesn't exist. Like when you stop believing in God, you're actually really angry that this person who you prayed to for me 18, 19 years, you believed was guiding your every move, in charge of atomic physics. Suddenly that person doesn't exist anymore and you are angry. And I'm saying this more as an example of the kind of emotion that might come up. For me, this was a phase I had to go through. Just it be. I to let it be even at that point. I really wasn't sure what to do with it. Part of my message is just these feelings will come. So seek help so that you can like deal with them but also we do have to just accept that these big emotions will come as we are dealing with these big seismic shifts and think it's helpful to seek professional help to learn tools that will help you with it but the thing goes along with that is also just accepting that they will erupt for you and it doesn't have to be sad and scary and terrible. That's not what I'm saying. But you've been sitting on a lot of stuff. And guess that's why I'm saying get someone to help you through these really big things. Because you shouldn't have to be alone. And you shouldn't have to feel alone in this kind of situation. And you aren't alone. That's what I'm saying. There's so many people who have been through this, who have experienced exactly what you're feeling, even though the interior feeling is like, who could know, like, how could anyone else understand this? But as I would just said, like, I read a book, someone had been through it, someone put to page, like, what I had experienced. So reach out.
Annabel Furber: Yeah.
Adam Jones: And the first step is just it to yourself and practice saying that I feel this and even if it's just hearing how you judge yourself for those things, like if you can do that, if you can start there, that's a huge step towards healing is A, feeling it and B, being attentive to how that, how you're responding to just your emotions. Because remember your emotions are you know, the Buddhist thing is like clouds over the sky. They're not you. They're not ⁓ you to do anything. They just are. And so acknowledge and accept them. That's like you were saying, hard for all of us. It's not just hard for people who have come out of a high control environment. It's not just hard for people who have trauma. It's not just hard for men or women and it's hard for everyone, but it is hard. ⁓ Just one ⁓ that point about emotions too is like, versus there's also the often that kind of divided body and too. We talk, you know, that's kind of the classic neoplatonic nonsense that we live in our and think in our Like they're not just incredibly enmeshed, but if you come from a high control environment that views the body as like the repository for sin. That is part of the work that you're doing is learning to feel your body and welcome those sensations and not just live in your brain. And that's been a big thing for me is trying to split those two things, emotion versus intellect, physical sensation versus thought. Integrate and welcome it all.
Annabel Furber: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Viva la revoluçion! Basically what we've been talking about today is the patriarchy.
Adam Jones: Pretty much.
Annabel Furber: So I'll end here with asking you if there's, I have such a great reading list from you here to add, but is there an organization, a group, or anyone that you just wanna give a shout out to?
Adam Jones: Well, I mean, I have done a lot of of thinking through ex-vangelical groups. If you even just Google this, you'll find a bunch of resources, podcasts, and who think about it. The academic Chrissy Stroop has been really important. A lot of the things she's written have influenced my ⁓ thinking about it. The books that I mentioned earlier, Jesus and John Wayne, really good. And then again, if you don't have access to help or therapy, you just wanna do some work to deconstruct that book, Leaving the Fold, will be a marvelous tool for you, even if you don't have as many resources as some. That book truly changed my life. She identifies in terms of coercive control and undoing things, not only is she able to identify them, but she has some suggestions for how to work through, for those of us who lived through, you know, like leaving them, the ways to leave. And again, one of the important things is what are the positive things that you had in your life? Like, what are some of the strengths that you can bring from these experiences.
Annabel Furber: And I actually think that's an example of the power of narrative, where it is healing and not harming. Well, thank you so much, Adam. Thank you. It was, it's going in my new delight journal. delights to chat with you today. Thank you for sharing.
Adam Jones: ⁓ thank you, Annabel
