deconstruction
-
Emotional vocabulary
Your emotional vocabulary matters! A better emotional vocabulary — all by itself — can help you develop better emotional skills! Researchers are finding that a better emotional vocabulary can help you identify, work with, and regulate your emotions. A rich vocabulary helps you understand yourself and the world around you, and it helps you understand…
-
Longing, Sehnsucht
Changing Paths challenge day 23 — longing. There are various words in other languages that can be approximately translated as longing or yearning. Sehnsucht (German), a longing for a person or a place. Saudade (Portuguese), melancholic longing for a person or a place. Hiraeth (Welsh), a longing for home, possibly unattainable since we cannot revisit…
-
Anger is valid
I said that anger is valid because it helps to propel us out of dangerous and abusive situations in Changing Paths (the book). I love that Jo Luehmann has talked about the neurological aspects of processing your anger in this post, and most importantly talking about it—absolutely brilliant. I think that if you turn anger…
-
Check your baggage
Changing Paths: unexamined baggage🧳 🎒💼👝👜 This is an excerpt from my book, ‘Changing Paths’: “Changing your religious or spiritual path can result in unexamined spiritual, emotional, and intellectual baggage from your previous tradition, which can cause all sorts of issues from depression to anger. We all need to unpack and deal with our unexamined baggage.…
-
Wibbly wobbly
Changing Paths challenge day 14: changing paths. Changing paths is a wibbly-wobbly thing. During the process, I was all over the place. It was like having the bends (you know, the thing where a diver rises too quickly to the surface and gets cramps) or being on a giant scary roller coaster ride. That’s why…
-
Things I don’t miss
Changing Paths challenge day 12 — things I don’t miss about the traditions I have left.
-
Smash that Protestant lens
Great piece from John Beckett this morning which covers some really good points about how to write about different religions, why the word “religion” should not be used as a synonym for Christianity, and how not all religions fit the “Protestant lens” (the way people tend to use the Protestant paradigm as a way to…
-
High glycemic religion
Religion can be divided into two types, high glycemic index and low glycemic index. High glycemic index gives you a big rush where everything seems really great and then you come down with a big crash afterwards. Low glycemic index is slow and steady, nourishes the soul, and keeps you going through the hard times.
-
Theological questions
Readers of Changing Paths may wonder why I chose not to address theological questions like the existence of God, what happens in the afterlife, and related questions. The first part of the book is aimed at people seeking to leave a variety of high-control traditions, which could be anything including fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist Islam, high-control…
-
Review from Suburban Witchery
I had a wonderful chat with Hana the Suburban Witch yesterday for her podcast, and today she has posted a wonderful review of Changing Paths (she was one of the advance readers and is quoted on the cover). “Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow is a down to earth and extremely practical book on the complexities…
-
Exvangelical podcasts
There’s a huge variety of exvangelical podcasts helping people deconstruct from toxic churches. Check out this list to discover some helpful ones.
-
I’d rather be “left behind”
There’s a good article in The Guardian today about the nasty psychological effects of being exposed to constant propaganda about the rapture and being “left behind”. Trigger warning if you’ve been exposed to that kind of bad theology. Thankfully I left the evangelical nonsense before the trend for making these movies happened.
-
A change of perspective
There was a guy in one of my classes — let’s call him Jonathan — who was openly gay. I had never knowingly interacted with, or even seen, anyone gay before. … He just stood and sang, a capella. It was honestly beautiful in its own right — Jonathan has a great voice. But, as…
-
Review: Cultish
This book is an excellent overview of the languages of cults, and what attracts people to them.
Changing Paths 