Over the years, I have posted many times about how conservative religion produces members who are sexually repressed.

And more studies are showing that sexual repression is a key factor in producing child abusers.

But what constitutes sexual repression.

3 factors: 1. Sexual Shame: If a child or teen is shamed for their sexual responses and urges, this is the biggest factor at beginning the process of sexual repression. Sexual shame includes body shaming and destructive self-image issues.

I’m a former pastor, and I don’t normally engage theologically any longer.

However, this idiotic comparison some are making between the trials of Trump and Jesus pissed me off enough to put on my theological hat.

Settle in: Jesus’ trial vs. Trump’s trial.
A comparison thread: 1.Jesus was on trial for saying he was a king. Trump was on trial for giving money to a porn star to hush her up, for using donated campaign funds, and then for covering up his activities. They are not the same.

Is the weight of the genocide, the coming elections, and the devastating inflation overpowering you? I might have some mediating things you can do.

One of my mentors, Dr. William Glasser taught there were five basic needs all people have:

1. Safety and Security 2. Love and Belonging
3. Need to Achieve
4. Need to be free to choose
5. Fun.

He called the ideal version of all those needs being met for us and the people we care about our "Total Quality World" (TQW).

He called the reality we live in our "Real World Experience" (RWE).

Watch

I read an article a few minutes ago titled "How to Fight Off Your Inner Critic."

In #IFS therapy, we teach the opposite. The Inner Critic is not an entity from outside yourself. You created this part early in life most likely.

Befriend this part.
Get to know several things: First, what does it perceive as its role in your life?
Second, how old does this Inner Critic think you are? If they're not correct, catch them up
Third, what are they afraid would happen if they didn't criticize you?
Fourth, are they willing to modify their role.

They can.

Many of you have asked me why I call other social media "silo'd". So let me explain siloing.

It is a business term. In business, organizational silos refer to business divisions that operate independently and avoid sharing information.

Open org structures are the opposite. Facebook is silo'd because you can only interact with people you are friends with. Discord and Mastodon are silo'd because they are separated into privately monitored servers. Though M has limited search capabilities via hashtags, finding people outside your silo is painful

One thing you never hear from most pulpits—but it historically accurate.

In the pantheon of Canaanite gods, Asherah and El are the Creator-mother and her Consort. El is often translated “Most High” in English bibles.

Yahweh is one of their many children.
So are the Baals. The Israelites were polytheistic throughout their history. No bible scholar disputes this. It is only after the Babylonian captivity that the Priests demanded that Israel repent from polytheism and worship only Yahweh.

They believed the Captivity was Yahweh’s judgment on them.

Let’s end the “Five Love Languages” bullshit.
They are so incredible misleading.
There are so many more.

A few—just a few—examples.

1. Sex. No, it is not the same as touch as anyone who doesn’t want sex can tell you. OR Sex Partners who don’t like touch.

2. Respect. Yes it is. 3. Growing in Emotional Intelligence. This takes work and only someone who loves will do it.

4. Self-denial. We all want some things that would hurt the ones we love.

5. Distance: Sometimes we need to create distance to truly show love to a disregulated person.

The Patriarchy is truly dying. It really is.
It is more noticeable in some circles. In others, it is still glowing with dying embers.

Here is where I as a therapist see it all the time. With men under 40. They are whining and scratching their heads to figure out why women won’t date them, have sex with them, or marry them. In social media meetings, they claim it is unfair. Their fathers, older brothers, uncles, grandfathers didn’t have to do much and women did their bidding.

The Real Dope on Dopamine and Sex

It used to be thought that Dopamine was the neurotransmitter your brain produced to reinforce pleasure. That means, if you do something pleasurable, like sex, your brain produces dopamine as a way of telling you "Do This Again"!

But... Dr. Wolfram Schultz and his research team completely changed our understanding of Dopamine.

It does have to do with pleasure. It is involved with reinforcing pleasurable feelings. But not the way it was thought it did.

They found out that the more you get pleasure out of...

I heard the interview with the gunman’s uncle yesterday. The young killer lived with him.

The uncle perked my ears: “He was a lively kid and then a couple of years ago, he got really quiet. Kept to himself.”

To therapists, this is a huge clue.
He self-isolated. Let me explain. I don’t know him. But I know self-isolation. It is a Part of the psyche that protects the Self by cutting off influences that the internal system deems harmful.

He gets locked up with his Protectors and Firefighters.
They talk him into stuff.
They talked him into mass murder.

The Bible calls David a “man after god’s own heart”.

Here is this “man”:

1. Raped his best friend’s wife
2. Killed best friend to cover it up
3. Sold out his country and hired himself out to the enemy.
4. Did nothing when his son raped his daughter.

<more> 5. Covers up the murder of his friend because ….he’s the final authority.
6. Takes his dead boss’s wives and girlfriends as his own harem after boss dies.
7. Threatens to kill a guy after the guy won’t feed him. When the guy dies that next day, he marries his wife.

<more>

I just posted this thread on Facebook.

I have come out against the Evangelical Church officially.

This is a slightly long thread. Please read:

The Ten Reasons Young People are Embracing Atheism and Agnosticism: American society just recorded the largest drop in people who believe in God in the period from 2017 until now: 6% drop.

This also represents a whopping 20% drop among people under 30.

And as a former pastor, I can tell you the reasons. They are simple.

Historical Perspective on how Christianity uses climate to blame others (a la Pat Robertson).

In the “Little Ice Age” which was a series of cooling periods, each time the weather affected crops adversely, women were blamed.

They were named as witches.

Usually widows… …women were blamed for all of the climate changes. We know now that the true causes were volcanic eruptions, the wobble in the earth’s axial rotation, and the sun’s decreased flares.

But marginalized women were blamed.
So was the European Jewish population.

Why?

Sorry.
Not Sorry.

Thurston High School.
Columbine High School.
Heritage High School.
Deming Middle School.
Fort Gibson Middle School.
Buell Elementary School.
Lake Worth Middle School.
University of Arkansas.
Junipero Serra High School.
Santana High School. Bishop Neumann High School.
Pacific Lutheran University.
Granite Hills High School.
Lew Wallace High School.
Martin Luther King, Jr. High School.
Appalachian School of Law.
Washington High School.
Conception Abbey.
Benjamin Tasker Middle School.
University of Arizona.

Dutch Sheets is a CO Springs pastor who teaches that through prayer and political action, Christians can make the entire world Christian; even if by force.

He supported virtually everything TFG did all in the name of overturning Roe V. Wade.

This from his website:
(thread) I want you to note all the warfare language. Evangelicals don’t just see spiritual forces as enemies. They see anyone who doesn’t agree with their agenda as enemies. And they ALWAYS have. I was part of them. In this text, he equates all non-evangelicals as enemies.

Why are some Christians so much against abortion and birth control? This is an intriguing story and may help to fill in some blanks.

There are three groups that want all children to be born. And it is. not about the children.

Let me summarize these three groups for you. Group 1 - The anti-sexuality people.
This is by far the largest group. They want to control their church members’ sexuality. Birth control and abortion took away the scariest part of their anti-sex campaign. As did sex education. This is your Jerry Falwell et al group.