How to Heal from Purity Culture
Getting your head, heart, body, and soul on the same page.
I didn’t want to write one more book about what the problems with purity culture are—we have many excellent books on that, both from a traditional perspective and a progressive one. I didn’t want to write one more book about what you should believe and why—I am not a theologian and I intended to mostly stay in my lane as a psychologist. My goal in writing this book wasn’t to change your mind or ask you to prescribe to my own personal ethic.
Instead, it’s to teach you the how—how to heal from purity culture. To provide you tools and techniques to change toxic beliefs and find healing by integrating the mind and body. To inspire critical thinking so you can discern what you believe and how you want to live out those beliefs. To help you finally find a path forward in your recovery.
Enjoy this condensed excerpt from Chapter 1 of my book, Recovering from Purity Culture.
How Do We Heal?
Father Richard Rohr says, “We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.”1
When I first read this quote, everything fell into place for me. It made sense why my clients were having a hard time enjoying sex in their marriage—even twenty years after they got married. It made sense why so many of us are still trying to escape the effects of purity culture.
Traditional therapy approaches assert that all you have to do to fix problems is to change your thoughts. Then you can change your feelings. But my purity culture clients usually come in already knowing what they should believe. They know purity culture was full of lies, and oftentimes, they already know what the right thoughts are. But they can’t seem to make their hearts and bodies catch up; they can’t seem to get their feelings and actions on the same page with their new beliefs. Their souls feel disconnected from God too—from any sense of their sexuality as sacred and spiritual.
Because of the disconnection in purity culture, because of how it severs our relationship to our sexuality, feelings, and faith, we have to pay attention to our beliefs, emotions, embodied experience, and spirituality. Instead of changing our thoughts to change our emotions, we use our new beliefs—what we now know to be true—and live them out in our hearts and bodies. To heal from purity culture, we have to get our head, heart, body, and soul aligned.
Trauma therapist and author Aundi Kolber says, “We cannot logic ourselves into safety or out of trauma.”2 We need to “show, don’t tell”—showing our bodies, hearts, and souls the truth through our lived experience rather than just telling our minds what we should believe. We need a new understanding—true, helpful beliefs—and a new experience—bodily, emotionally, and spiritually—in order to change.[iii] According to psychologist and researcher Dr. Hillary McBride, “The deepest and most lasting change happens when we have new experiences and then integrate them into the larger story of our lives. . . . Embodied experience is undeniably the most powerful channel of change.”3
Over time, my clients found healing through living out their new beliefs in their bodies, hearts, and souls. And over time, I believe we can all do the same.
Tools for the Journey
My book contains over 30 therapy exercises, skills, and concepts to help with purity culture recovery. At the end of each chapter of my book, I’ve included “Tools for the Journey”—the skills, exercises, and techniques I teach my clients. These tools are drawn from evidenced-based practices such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and somatic and mindfulness-based therapies. In order to support integration and wholeness, each tool focuses on four areas: (1) the body: our physical sensations, actions, and behaviors; (2) the mind: our thoughts and beliefs; (3) the heart: our emotions and feelings; and (4) the soul: our spiritual connection to God, to what is holy, sacred, and divine.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter One’s Tool for the Journey, dialectical thinking.
Dialectical Thinking
In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), one of the foundational skills is called “walking the middle path4.” We do this through dialectical thinking, or embracing both/and instead of either/or.
Dialectical thinking is the opposite of polarized, all-or-nothing thinking. It is about finding the synthesis between two seemingly opposing ideas. It is embracing nuance in the gray areas and rejecting black-and-white answers or extremes.
Purity culture only taught us to think in an absolute, right or wrong way. Dialectical thinking helps us bring openness and flexibility to our thinking patterns.
I believe it is also consistent with the way Jesus taught. Jesus was full of paradox, both welcoming people and calling them to change, both forgiving sins and requiring repentance, both offering grace and speaking truth. Jesus often said, “You have heard it said . . . but I say . . .” And as believers, we live in the “already, but not yet.”
See if you can identify which is a black-and-white, either/or statement and which is a dialectical, both/and statement. Suggested answers are available in the endnotes of the book.
1. You are either pure or impure, a virgin or not.
2. As Christians, we are made pure through Jesus regardless of our sexual past.
3. “There is no way to teach children or young adults to be abstinent until marriage without effectually teaching purity culture.”5
4. You can heal from purity culture and still hold on to a Christian sexual ethic.
5. Deconstruction means you’re no longer a Christian.
6. Questioning your beliefs can lead to a deeper, more nuanced faith.
What questions do you have about how to heal from purity culture? What do you think of the skill of dialectical thinking?
If you want to learn more about how to integrate your mind, body, heart, and soul, I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering Recovering from Purity Culture. When you pre-order, you get the first two chapters of the book now, plus a ton of other bonuses!
Let’s find the path forward together.
Warmly, Dr. Camden
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Aundi Kolber, Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety, and Compassion to Move through Hard Things—and Experience True Flourishing (Wheaton: Tyndale Refresh, 2023), 60.
Hillary L. McBride, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2021), loc. 665 of 4399, Kindle.
Sound familiar? This is where I got the name of my Substack.
Allison, #ChurchToo, 213.