“Sometimes walking out is the only way to stop walking away from yourself.” ~ Unknown
I am in between sessions. My TV turned on in the background – something I started watching half-called Mormon wife’s secret life On Hulu — as I walked into the kitchen for lunch.
It is about a group of Mormon wives who became famous TikTok and got into what they call “Soft swing”. In one scene, a young woman argues with her mother, who has a long list of rules about how her daughter should behave. The daughter fled the church in fear of eviction threats and tried to maintain her freedom without losing her family.
I stood watching lunch, forgetting because something in it stopped me.
She is struggling between who she really is and who she belongs to. And is that not a human condition?
We want a connection. We are strengthened for it, for better and for worse. But the connection to the tribe comes with value. It always has. You follow the rules. You place parts of yourself that do not fit – sometimes small, sometimes huge – and in return you belong. It is an operation. Just no dollar bill, change hands.
The implied deal is: find your place, stay in your lane and the team will keep you. It’s a kind of token economy. An unspoken loyalty contract. And most of us sign it before we are old enough to read a good print.
I have been in a homage for forty-three years
It is not a religion. No shirts, no premises, no generous leaders asking for your savings account. It is more sensitive and more prevalent.
It is called human reverence. Human reverence is a religion that most of us are born with.
It is the constant noise of the needs, thoughts and expectations of others.
It is a practice of connection-seeking, external confirmation, addiction and preference to be included.
It organizes your entire inner life around what people around you can endure.
It makes itself small enough, arrogant enough to agree enough to keep the peace and keep the people.
For forty-three years I have been a devoted member. I did not know I was in it. That’s how religion works.
Seven Years of Deprogramming
Nearly seven years ago I started leaving. Not intentionally from the beginning. It came as a byproduct of things I did not choose, such as epidemics, parenting with most special needs on my own, and slow and unethical medical work. I was starting to see for the first time how much reach and earnings and defamation I had done most of my life. How much did I withdraw to keep in touch with people who needed me to be in control?
I do not want to make money anymore. But I do not know what or who does not earn money will make me.
So I found out.
Tears of seven years. Of loneliness without a bottom. Of massive anxiety attacks in the middle of a normal day. The heartbreak and loss I did not see coming. From looking at my circle getting smaller and smaller and sitting with the dreaded question of how I caused it. Of feeling sometimes like me in hell.
I do not want to paint this beautiful thing because it does not exist. But it turned out to be something. And it is not wasted.
What Deprogramming Really Looks Like
In practical terms, uninstalling the application requires distance. You have to walk away from a group that requires betrayal, both physically and emotionally, sometimes permanently, before you start seeing the water you are swimming in. The same is here.
When you start to build distance from people, some things happen.
At first, there seems to be something wrong with you. You are calmer. You stop performing. You reject invitations you used to accept without obligation. Your circle shrinks. People around you – still in respect – do not understand it, and some of them take it personally. Because in that respect, withdrawals are the most threatening thing you can do. Religion needs your involvement to survive.
But something else happened as well. Because you are abandoned by people who can not follow you faithfully, abandonment loses some power. You stop lying to yourself to continue the relationship. You start to see vague deals that you have made all your life – all the way you have made a deal with a piece trading group of your own for ownership and call it love.
You start to see clearly. And clarity, it turns out, is the gift and grief of the whole process.
Both / and its.
Here’s what no one tells you about leaving people’s respect: It doesn’t feel immediately free. It feels like a loss. It feels like loneliness. It feels like you made a terrible mistake.
And at the same time, under all that, everything else is on the rise. Something calmer and more stable. The self that does not perform. Sounds you can really trust. An internal compass that works because it is not disturbed by other people’s signals.
Here are two treatments that really look like – not either / or not broken or healed or not found or found. Both. Simultaneously. Break through and break down at the same time. Sad and longing and also somewhere under it, knowing you deserve better. Make all the right decisions and still watch the collapsing story hear the sound in your head that brings you to tears and still – still – still hold your young version with kindness.
That is not a weakness. That’s what looks like to people in the middle of honesty.
The Road to Freedom
I did not uninstall the application completely. I do not know if it is a goal or not. I’m still lonely. Sometimes I still feel the pull to find my way back to a room that costs too much. I still regret the relationship that could not survive being more self-sufficient.
But I am more willing to grieve than before. It does not scare me like it does. I learned to sit with myself in a way that I could not do before, not because the discomfort was gone, but because I stopped running from it.
Here is what I know now: The same thing that means no one comes to help you is also the same thing that means no one can stop you. Loneliness that feels like abandonment also becomes an opening. When you stop organizing your life around what the team can endure, you find – perhaps for the first time – what you really want. Actually who you are. What you really are capable of.
That is not an encouraging reward.
That is the way to freedom.
About Allison Briggs
Allison Jeanette Briggs is a therapist, author and speaker who specializes in helping women recover from code dependence, childhood trauma and emotional neglect. She mixes emotional insights with spiritual depth to guide clients and readers towards self-confidence, boundaries and true connection. Allison is the author of Future Memories On Being Real: Healing the Codependent Heart of a Woman and shares reflections on healing, resilience and inner freedom at on-being-real.com.
