Every survivor I’ve talked to since the conference has said that they really struggled afterwards. I was not exempt from the waves of emotions that followed once I was back home. The conference always seems to birth something new in me. I don’t know if it’s the time of year, if it’s because I’ve learned to use it as a marker for how much I’ve changed over the previous year, or what, but it seems like I always walk away with a fresh vision for the coming year. Mixed in with that is usually a letting go of what was and having to trust what I cannot yet see, knowing that both will be uncomfortable.

I think this year was more intense than normal because there were quite a few survivors who had known each other online for a while but were meeting in person for the first time. There was all the buildup of excitement, the whole spectrum of emotions throughout the weekend, and then the goodbyes. There’s something about being with your tribe and getting to sit in a room with people who fully understand without needing an explanation that is probably next level for a survivor of SRA and mind control programming. The world at large doesn’t make much space for things it doesn’t understand, so when you get to come together with a whole room full of people who are gathered with the same agenda, it can almost feel euphoric.

For one weekend, you belong. You are seen, heard, understood, safe, and maybe even having fun for the first time in far too long. You can talk about things that would make most people look at you like you have three heads and the person sitting across from you just nods because they get it. There is no long explanation required before you can get to the actual point. There’s a freedom in that that is hard to explain to anyone who has never had to spend most of their life hiding huge parts of their reality just to function in the world.

The energy that comes from all of that carries you through the weekend, but it can be really hard to maintain when you find yourself back at home in the familiar routine of doing life while trying to heal. The isolation sets in, the loneliness screams, the waves of emotion try to drown you, and all you can think is, what the heck is happening? Nothing has to actually be wrong. No one has to have done anything to you. It can just hit you, and when you don’t understand what is happening, it’s really easy to believe whatever story those emotions are telling you.

For me, the first couple of conferences were very different than they are now. I would leave feeling utterly overwhelmed by the abandonment and attachment narrative playing out in my system. All kinds of scenarios would play out in my head about why I wasn’t good enough, why I would never have a family to go home to, and why I was never going to have anyone to do life with. I was reminded of the bitter disgust I believed I had become to the people who knew me, and I just wanted to go to bed and sleep until something changed.

I knew plenty about spiritual warfare, but I didn’t know that a lot of what I was experiencing was coming from my own system. I didn’t know that they program parts to flood the system with emotions when I start to take back some legal ground in my healing. I didn’t know that trauma memories, body memories, fear, shame, grief, abandonment and whatever else might make me want to give up could all start firing at the same time. I didn’t know that parts were scared of everything they had just heard because it went against what the cult had taught them. I didn’t understand that they thought they were helping me by trying to bring me back into alignment with the cult lies because, to them, those lies had kept us alive. What I understood as healing and freedom could feel incredibly dangerous to a part who had been taught that stepping outside of those boundaries would bring punishment.

There are also some things that the mental health field understands really well about trauma, even though mainstream mental health often does not have a framework for everything that comes with SRA and mind-control programming. I think they get a lot of things right, they just don’t have the knowledge or skills needed to go deep enough for what we need. I’ve learned a lot about the nervous system, attachment, dissociation, triggers and trauma responses that has helped me understand what is happening in my body and my system instead of immediately assuming I am losing my mind. We just have the hijacked 2.0 version that the cult purposely programmed to keep us from getting free.

One of those things is that our bodies don’t always process something while it is happening. Sometimes we get through the event just fine and everything hits once we get somewhere safe enough to fall apart. Think about everything that happens over conference weekend. There’s anticipation leading up to it, travel, people everywhere, very little normal routine, hard conversations, worship, tears, laughter, learning, triggers, connection, lack of sleep and probably a whole lot of adrenaline carrying us through. Then suddenly it’s over and you are sitting at home in the quiet. Your body has to come down from all of that somehow.

There’s also the attachment piece, and I think this one is a big deal for a lot for survivors. For someone who grew up with healthy attachment, a goodbye may just be a goodbye. For some of us, separation has carried a very different meaning. People leaving meant abandonment. People disappearing meant something bad happened. Loving someone meant there was now someone you could lose. Being attached to someone could be used against you. So, we can be standing there as grown adults knowing perfectly well that our friends are getting in their cars or getting on airplanes and going back to their own homes while some part of us is experiencing something completely different.

The same thing can happen when you go from being surrounded by people who understand you to being alone again because we just lost our opportunity for co-regulation, which basically means that our nervous systems help regulate one another. When I’m sitting with people that I feel safe with, my body knows that. When I’m laughing with people I love, when someone understands me without me having to explain myself, when I know I am not the only person in the room carrying this kind of story, my body knows that too. Then everybody goes home and the room gets quiet.

I think sometimes we misinterpret the pain that follows and assume it means something was wrong or that it’s all spiritual warfare. I don’t think that is always true at all. Sometimes I think the pain just exposes how deeply we needed the connection in the first place. Being lonely feels different after you’ve just had a few days of remembering what it feels like not to be lonely. It doesn’t mean we weren’t ready for it, but now we sort of grieve the loss of it. This is where I have learned to get curious instead of immediately reacting. I’ll bind up any witchcraft coming against me and ask the Lord to help me sit with the emotion while He helps me start to understand it. I had to do that a lot for several days following the conference this year.

What am I actually feeling? What happened right before this started? Does this belong to now or is something about now reminding my system of something else? Who is afraid? What do they think is going to happen? What did they hear at the conference that scared them? What do they believe I am doing that is dangerous? Are they trying to protect me from something that was true then but isn’t true anymore? Am I trying to sabotage something good?

Sometimes there is something really important underneath all of it and I need to pay attention. Sometimes I realize a part is terrified because something they heard about God, freedom, healing or their own identity completely contradicted what they were taught. Sometimes the goodbye really did hit an old abandonment wound. Sometimes something good that happened over the weekend bumped into something incredibly painful from the past.

And sometimes I’m just exhausted.

Sometimes I haven’t slept enough, eaten enough real food or had enough quiet. My body has been running on adrenaline for days, I’ve talked to hundreds of people, felt a thousand different emotions, and I need to stop trying to figure out the meaning of life long enough to eat something, drink some water and sleep. That has probably been one of the most helpful things I’ve learned. I don’t have to figure everything out while I’m in the middle of the wave. I can give it a little time. Because I have learned that the middle of an emotional flood is a really bad place to decide that everyone hates me, nobody wants me, God abandoned me, I need to end a relationship, I need to quit something, I need to run away, or my entire life is falling apart.

Don’t start collecting all the evidence for why you should give up or why you are going backwards again just because you’re struggling to adjust being at home. Take some time to rest. I’m working on a new project and part of it is about taking the time to rest and process after sessions. We can’t just bulldoze our way through and keep going nonstop. This is the first time I’ve taken a true break in 6 years, and I cannot let that happen again. I’m already learning so much about myself because I have finally stopped to rest and its only day 2 for me.

I know that healing can shake things loose. I know that experiencing healthy connection can expose wounds we didn’t know were still there. I know that being seen can make us suddenly aware of how much of our life we spent unseen. I also know that feeling safe can actually give my body permission to finally feel things it could not afford to feel while it was surviving and I think that happens for me at the conference.

Sometimes having one beautiful weekend where you experience what it feels like to belong makes going home hurt like crazy. I don’t think that means anything went wrong. I think it’s much more likely that it means something went right! Maybe something inside finally experienced enough safety to recognize what safety feels like. Maybe a part who believed no one would ever understand realized there are actually people in this world who do. Maybe being loved exposed the places that still expect to be abandoned. Maybe hearing truth stirred up parts that have spent a lifetime trying to keep everyone aligned with lies because they genuinely believed those lies were keeping us alive.

Instead of thinking of the crash as something wrong or something to fear, what if it’s just where the next layer of healing begins?