It has been almost a year since I first fell apart emotionally. It is staggering to see how much growth I’ve experienced in that amount of time. I went from feeling my life was over to feeling that my life has just begun. I went from trying to shut out the world to wanting to welcome it back in. I have learned how to accept and listen to my feelings, both positive and negative, and to express them. I have learned to grieve what I have lost and to start dreaming again for the future. I still struggle at times, and I feel like I will always be on a path towards recovery. The difference now is that I have tools to deal with such episodes, and I am able to respond in much more effective and mature ways.
Marlene is the only one I know who is working in the area of RTS (Religious Trauma Syndrome). Based on her book, Leaving the Fold, and knowing Marlene for a few years, as well as attending one of her weekend RTS retreats and speaking with some of her attendees, I highly recommend Marlene if you suspect you may have RTS. She’s very down to earth and keeps it ‘real.’
Marlene is skilled, intuitive, and informed. She has a gentle but firm way of guiding a person through the healing steps and skill-building needed for coping with the negative aspects of religious upbringing.
Dr. Winell’s book is distinguished by an intelligent approach which fully acknowledges the benefits of an authentic religious education as well as the pitfalls of certain forms of religious indoctrination which rob the individual of personal responsibility and integrity and the exercise of reason; an important question to contemplate today when fast changing, complex, uncertain times make simple answers very appealing especially to the young; and when fundamentalist thinking is found not only in religion but in economics and politics and nationalism too.
There is great safety in exploring issues related to religious trauma with others who have shared similar experiences with the moderation and direction of an experienced professional. Marlene is skilled, intuitive and informed. She has a gentle but firm way of guiding a person through the healing steps and skill building needed for coping with the negative aspects of religious upbringing.
Marlene is passionate about emotional health, specifically recovery from harmful fundamentalist religions. Count on her to be non-judgmental and compassionate.
I found the retreats enormously helpful, with a wonderful group of warm people who had been through much of what I had been through. Marlene is a uniquely gifted leader who understands like so few do what it’s like to be in the middle of the all-encompassing religious life many of us former “born agains” lived in. I HIGHLY recommend attending…you will not regret it.
“I think the book makes an important contribution to the current discussion about religious cults and extreme fundamentalist groups. . . One of its best features is the therapeutic exercises it offers, which people can do in private, exercises which act as aids to recovery. . . It’s positive, healthy-minded, cheerful and intelligent, and I think it might prove very useful indeed, not just to people who have left their religion, but those who are trying to help them. For those people, I recommend it highly.”
Dr. Winell was helpful, full of insights and exercises that promoted growth for me. She knows how to sit in a physical and mental and emotional space with someone who is strung out and scared and hurting and be able to walk them closer to a position of strength to where they can begin to take care of themselves, going forward. I attribute a lot of the growth I have been able to do unhooking myself from my fundamentalist background to Marlene’s competence and helpfulness.
Unlike regular secular psychologists, Dr. Winell was not tone-deaf as per what a religiously socialized person will be like in terms of their fears, doubts, tendencies toward considering suicide, and so on. She was supportive in being able to offer both understanding and respect. There is no way a regular secular psychologist could help anyone wishing to unhook from a fundamentalist upbringing the way she, a person of the same background, can. She provides this help with humor and inventiveness and it does work.
Dr. Winell was not anti-spirituality or anti-god. As I progressed under her tutelage and went through a phase of being super-angry (which I guess in some ways I still am) about having been duped by fundamentalist Christianity, I sometimes found myself wishing she *would* take anti-God stances and/or make fun of Christianity since that might have felt satisfying. I guess I can remember some activities that did use gentle humor to satirize religious proselytizing. But for me at least, this gently humorous treatment of proselytizing was one of the most healing activities at the retreats. And for me to say this–me, a person raised in a household that was all about **fear**–that is really saying something. Something very positive about Marlene and the retreats she designs.
Leaving the Fold is a compassionate blueprint for healing.