Healing from Unprocessed Pain: Overcoming Addiction and Religious Trauma

Arlina Allen: The pain waits. And as soon as I poured alcohol on my pain, it would explode. That’s when all my stuff came out, and that’s why I could never predict my behavior once I started drinking. I didn’t realize I had so much unprocessed pain. I was dissociating from a very young age. When we dissociate, it’s not as if those experiences go away—it’s like they’re locked away in a barrel of toxic waste that leeches into everything else. Pour alcohol on that, and things got worse.

There were a couple of things that would happen as soon as I drank. This feeling of “more” would kick in—I had no off switch. I was definitely a blackout drinker. “Party till you puke” was my motto. I made a joke out of everything. I’d say, “If I didn’t have splash marks on my shoes the next day, it wasn’t a good time.” I was this wild party girl.

But it was a response to all the unprocessed pain deep inside. I had no coping skills.

Michael Unbroken: One of the things I think about a lot—because I grew up in the Mormon Church, which was incredibly traumatic, especially being biracial there—is how religious pressures can impact people. I’m curious: did the pressures of your father being very spiritual and religious play a role?

I often see a connection between religious pressure to “be good” and addiction. I’m not trying to throw religion under the bus, but I’m wondering if you think there’s a correlation.

Arlina Allen: That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked. I’m not afraid to throw religion under the bus because the sad thing is, the teachings of Jesus were all about forgiveness—a compassionate, beautiful idea of redemption. We’re human, we’re not going to be perfect, and it’s okay to make mistakes.

But I didn’t get that message. I got the message that if I wasn’t perfect, I’d be condemned. I was presented with ideals—perfectionism ideals—that are impossible. It’s like the horizon: you can walk toward it forever, but you’ll never arrive. That’s what these ideals were like for me.

What was missing was the context and perspective that it’s okay to be human—that’s how I was made. But in the parlance of religion, there’s a lot of perfectionism expected. I tried to live up to these ideals and kept failing. Eventually, I gave up. I thought, “If I can’t be perfect, what’s the point?” I abandoned the idea of the religious God—the “sky daddy.” But I also threw out the baby with the bathwater, because I’ve since learned that spirituality is different.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Spirituality can be separate from religion. Learning that was a gift—I didn’t know it was possible until I got sober.

Michael Unbroken: Thank you for sharing that. I just wanted to paint a deeper picture for people of your experience because it’s not something I want to gloss over. I’ve coached thousands of people, and those with deep religious trauma—myself included—tend to want to escape it, often through destructive avenues.

When you try to force beliefs down people’s throats, they may push back—not necessarily by leaving the church, but through drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and other harmful behaviors. They stop feeling good enough in the place that’s supposed to be the safest. That’s a hard thing to reconcile—when the supposed safe place becomes the most damaging. So, thank you for sharing that.

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Bronwyn: If we don't name them, if we don't give them words, those emotions master us.

Michael: Yeah, entirely. For context and clarity—same, same, but different, right? What you're saying and what I'm saying—same thing, different terminologies, different phraseology. Ultimately, that came from a place where one day, in my personal journey, I realized my emotions were running amok.

I went from having zero emotional capacity—other than violence, which I thought was an emotion, but obviously I’ve come to find is not. I mean physical violence, emotional violence, mental violence—it was very dark for a long time. In fact, I learned to shut off.

For 15 years, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry when my three childhood best friends were murdered. I didn’t cry when my grandmother died. I didn’t cry when my mother died. I didn’t cry during breakups. I didn’t cry ever because I was so shut off. Then I opened the release valve through coaching, therapy, personal work, journaling, meditation, yoga—all of it.

Suddenly, my emotions were like a fire hose spraying everything and everyone at all times. It was interesting because there was this pendulum swing. To get to normality and baseline, the reason I use the word “control” is because it’s about being mindful of it.

When I learned about the 90-second rule, that changed my life forever. I realized I didn’t have to be the emotion all the time, and I could sit in baseline, recognizing that there’s dissipation over time.

I want to go a little deeper here because we were talking about childhood. I want to sit in this space a moment longer. It was a question I had. I found that causation and correlation, for me as an analytical person—probably more so than I care to be—has led me to a place where, if I can have a foundational understanding and framework for why something happens in my life, that gives me the power to move through it, create a game plan, and overcome, heal, or grow from it.

Bronwyn: Yeah.

Michael: One of the reasons I’m saying this is because I know I’m not the only person who’s experienced it. Obviously, we’re a podcast about childhood trauma. Growing up, one of the phrases I heard more than anything—and I believe it’s the cornerstone to me shutting off emotionally, and something many people go through—is: If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.

I see your reaction. What comes up for you on this pathway to anger?

Bronwyn: Yeah, I am having a reaction to that. I know many people have heard it. I’m feeling disgusted. Maybe I’ll start with what that parent or caregiver is saying in that moment. What they’re really saying is: Your vulnerability is too evocative for me to tolerate because I am so shut off to all my vulnerable emotions. I cannot handle yours.

Also, the fact that you’re crying, I see exclusively as a reflection of me failing you in some way, and I refuse to acknowledge that. So you better smile and look happy so I can feel better about me. That’s the narcissistic component.

What they’re not doing—but should be—is saying: You’re you, you’re not me. This is not a reflection of me failing you. This is a reflection of you being hurt. And when someone’s hurt, they need a hug. They need to be understood. They need someone to be a mirror and reflect back what they see, saying, “Wow, little Michael, you look really sad. Tell me what’s going on. Would you like a hug? Would you like to talk about it? I want to hear.”

Michael: Why is vulnerability, especially in that context, so terrifying to people?

Bronwyn: Shame. Let me talk about shame. Shame is not an emotion. Shame is a feeling—yes—but not an emotion. The word “emotion” stands for something that is there to give us movement, to elicit movement.

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Orion: If you're not going to love yourself, who else will? You teach people how to love you by the way you love yourself. You're like, "Oh, they don't love me. They don't treat me well." How well do you treat yourself? How much do you love yourself? What you give to yourself teaches others how they should treat you. Of course, there are extremes like abusive people, blah, blah, blah. But in general, if you want to get love, love yourself more, give more love.

Michael: And it's going to suck at the beginning. It really does. If you're full of criticism, self-hatred, self-loathing, and suicidal ideations—which I've had—all of those… The first time my life actually changed was when I stared in the mirror and made myself look at myself. I'd never looked at myself before.

There was so much shame and guilt. It's not, "Hey, how's my hair? How's my beard? How are my clothes?" It's like I looked into the depth of who I was, and it sucked. And so when I wrote Think Unbroken and we released that book almost six years ago—which is so crazy—one of the chapters talks about doing this mirror work.

Because it's so profoundly important, and I don't think it's talked about enough. It creates this moment where your life gets to change because now you can start commanding yourself to love yourself. You are giving yourself orders and stepping into that brainwashing capacity that I think is unbelievably necessary.

Well, I want to just stay in that for a moment. What was the biggest aha for you in the mirror work? What shift happened for you that made the discomfort dissipate?

Orion: Oh, it was the day I was able to look at myself and say, "I love you," and not cry. That was amazing. I felt it was a breakthrough. Spending time with myself and sending good vibes to that girl in the mirror and loving her no matter what—no matter how broken, devastated, unwanted, or trash-like she feels—still loving her. I was proud of myself in that moment.

Michael: And—

Orion: We spoke about conversations. Sometimes our subconscious mind—that lizard brain I was talking about—that part that wants to be right and do whatever you tell it… Sometimes when we say, even joking, "I'm so stupid," or when we're self-deprecating—

Michael: Deprecating.

Orion: Yes, that word. Humor that puts yourself down—catch those moments and eliminate them. If you’re amazingly smart and can joke like that, why not joke and say really good things about yourself? Because the brain and the subconscious do not understand that you're joking. It takes it in.

So always talk to yourself about yourself very highly. When you talk about yourself to other people, say good things about yourself. And when you talk to yourself in private, please say really nice things about yourself.

You only have one life to live. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. So love yourself today. Don't wait until somebody else is going to love you and then you'll feel loved. It doesn't work that way.

When you are whole, the love that you want will come to you. Of course, when we have a partner, and that's a beautiful, supportive partner, it increases the love—but you’ve got to do the work for yourself. Don't wait for the day something’s going to happen and then you'll love yourself and feel happy.

"I'm going to get that beautiful big house and then I'm going to feel happy"—no. You’ve got to experience those emotions now. Go into gratitude and appreciation for what you have and train your brain to be in gratitude and appreciation, because our brain is still primitive. We're still looking for the saber-toothed tiger and what's bad.

We are trained in our DNA to look for danger and to look for what's bad. So if you practice mirror work or gratitude, you change that and start looking for what's good. It's a process, but it's amazing what gratitude can do. Even just one list of gratitude when you feel like, "Oh, my life sucks, I have nothing to be grateful for."

You're breathing, right? Somebody just died this second. You can walk? Great—many people cannot walk. You can talk? Great. You can write? You can think? Thank God you can think. There are so many things we can be grateful for.

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Michael: I'm going to go and continue to do the things that reinforce to me that I am worthy of love. I am worthy of the life that I'm trying to build. The energy for me has become so different because we often try to heal the voice of trauma with another voice of trauma.

Jerry: We try to heal the voice of an inner critic with another voice of the inner critic. And so we beat the hell out of ourselves for having the echoes and we shame ourselves for it. "Well, I'm still broken. I still have these." If you start to accept that this stuff is totally normal, it should be a part of the journey and the story.
And it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you that you have that. I always felt like I was the one person—I’d hear other people's stories and think, "Yeah, they can do that, but I can't do that." That story drove my life until I finally realized, oh my God, it's a story, and it's something that's trying to serve me.
I separated, created a gap between me and the voice, started to observe it, and it disempowered it. A lot of curiosity came in to do exactly what you're saying. So yeah.

Michael: When I initially created Think Unbroken almost a decade ago, the tagline and what I was trying to do at the time was: We are the stories we tell ourselves.
I found that to be the most accurate truism of my life. The words I would put into the world would always somehow come back to me. I keep looking at the world and thinking, "This is a mirror. This is not some outside perspective."
What I see with my eyes is a mirror—it is not a window. That felt true because when I started to understand the functions of the brain, for example, the reticular activating system—the idea that we see what we seek, right? The Bible says, "Seek and you will find." You want to find a bad relationship? You'll find a bad relationship. You want to find health? You'll find health.
I parlayed that with a deep dive into Gestalt—not only from my own therapeutic healing journey, but also reading every piece of literature and watching everything I could find on it—because I was so dissociated. I needed to get into the present, and Gestalt really helps you sit in the here and now. It brings personal responsibility, awareness, and helps you move away from intellectualizing into the moment.
As I navigated this, I also worked with IFS, EMDR, CBT, NLP, ABC, and every acronym you could imagine. It always came down to the same thing: no matter what I was doing, the self-narrative and storytelling element became the thing I could leverage to create change. If you believe—was it Mark Twain?—"Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right."

Jerry: Right.

Michael: And that's the part about shame. If you find the belief system shift, you can let go of it and become a fully formed, authentic, unjudged—now, unjudged internally, because trust me, society is judging the hell out of you—it doesn't matter. But if you can become that version of you, that's where freedom lies.
The thing that came up for me was I just started asking myself all of these questions, diving deeper and deeper, and I realized it always comes down to one or two things, just like you mentioned earlier.
I preface all that to ask this question: What is one thing you wish everyone understood about shame?

Jerry: That you're not the shame. Shame will trick you into thinking you are the shame. It is not who you are. One of the hardest things in healing from shame is to put it outside of us.
It is the most devious, tricky part about shame. Guilt says, "I did something wrong." Shame says, "I am something wrong." I would love for people to understand that feeling they carry—that belief that they're uniquely broken, that there's something wrong with them—is shame. And that shame is not you.

It is something you learned. It is a habit, and it is something you can unlearn.