Is Religion A Cult?
Trauma Healing Mentor, Brooke Deanne, shares with us her personal journey through indoctrination and abuse inside the Jehovah's Witness religion- and her what life looks like now on the other side.
A Little About The Guest.
Brooke Deanne is a Trauma Healing Mentor, Rapid Transformational Therapist (RTT), and NLP Practitioner who empowers survivors to reclaim their lives by rewriting their stories. Having personally overcome indoctrination, abuse, and toxic relationships, Brooke brings profound insight and unwavering dedication to her work. As a highly sought-after speaker, best-selling author, and passionate advocate against religious abuse and domestic violence, Brooke's influence extends well beyond her practice.
She empowers women to shatter the chains of abuse and childhood trauma, enabling them to create healthier relationships and reclaim their true lives. She specializes in helping women break free from the cycles of abuse and trauma to build fulfilling and authentic lives. With her holistic approach, Brooke works through years of emotional baggage in half the time of traditional talk therapy.
By helping her clients create a new foundation for their sense of self, healing their nervous systems, and removing outdated stories and patterns, she enables them to access new levels of mind, body, and spirit integration. This transformative process empowers women to reclaim their power and live in their authenticity.
Find + Connect With Brooke Here:
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | FIND HER BOOK
The Guest Deep-Dive.
1. What does your daily life actually look like right now- and how different is it from what you were told a good life was supposed to look like?
My daily life today feels peaceful, fulfilling, and aligned in a way I never thought was possible. I have found deep purpose in helping women reconstruct their lives after relational and religious abuse. There is something incredibly meaningful about taking my pain, wisdom, and healing journey and using it to help others reclaim themselves. I also have the time and space to take care of my own body, nervous system, and mental health before showing up for my clients, which has completely changed how I live and work. Most importantly, I have the freedom and flexibility to be fully present for my children when they need me, while also having the ability to travel and experience life in ways I never allowed myself to before. My life feels grounded, spacious, and full of ease, yet deeply rich in purpose and connection.
What makes it so different from the life I was taught to pursue inside the religion is that I was conditioned to believe a “good life” meant constantly staying busy doing the work of the Lord. The focus was supposed to be on spiritual studies, recruiting new followers, attending meetings, and raising children inside the faith. Productivity in the religion was measured by devotion, obedience, and how much of your life you sacrificed for the organization. I now realize that what I was taught to call fulfillment was often exhaustion, self-abandonment, and living disconnected from myself. Today, fulfillment feels completely different. It feels like freedom, authenticity, peace, meaningful work, and the ability to fully live my life instead of constantly proving my worth through sacrifice.
2. What's something you do, enjoy, wear, eat, watch or listen to that would have been forbidden or shameful before- that you now do completely unapologetically?
One of the biggest shifts for me has been allowing myself to enjoy life without guilt or fear attached to it. Inside the religion, so much entertainment was censored and heavily judged. Even something as simple as watching an R-rated movie was frowned upon because you were constantly taught to monitor what you consumed and whether it was “acceptable” spiritually. Now, I allow myself to watch, listen to, and enjoy whatever genuinely makes me feel alive without carrying shame. I listen to music that moves, inspires, and connects me to myself, and I no longer live under the weight of worrying about other people’s judgment. BEST thing is that now I get to celebrate birthdays and holidays, for myself, others, and my boys!!! That has been SO fun!
I also deeply enjoy learning and researching subjects that would have once been considered dangerous or forbidden. Studying the history of the Bible, religion, consciousness, and Gnosticism has allowed me to develop a much deeper understanding of reality, spirituality, and my own relationship with a higher power and the universe. Instead of being told what I am allowed to believe, I now have the freedom to explore, question, and think for myself, and that freedom has been incredibly healing.
But honestly, my favorite thing of all is that my time finally belongs to me. For so many years, my life revolved around serving the religion and sacrificing endless time to meetings, ministry, studying, and obligations that consumed my weekends and evenings. I was constantly busy doing “the work,” but rarely present with myself. Now I have my weekends back. I have my nights to myself. I can rest, travel, create, connect with my children, and actually enjoy my life without guilt attached to it. That freedom feels priceless.
3. What kind of a woman are you in relationships- romantic, friendships, all of it? Has that changed, and what does Brooke look like when she actually feels safe with someone?
In relationships, I feel everything very deeply. I see people for who they truly are beneath the surface, and I have a very empathetic heart, which means I love deeply too. In romantic relationships, my love is passionate, intentional, and emotionally present. I am someone who genuinely wants depth, connection, honesty, and emotional intimacy. When I care about someone, I care fully.
The biggest thing that has changed over the years is that I no longer abandon myself in relationships the way I once did. I used to pour endlessly into people, hoping they would eventually meet me at the same depth I was offering them. Now I understand that healthy relationships require reciprocity, mutual effort, emotional safety, and consistency. In my friendships, I show up fully, I am loyal, supportive, and deeply committed to the people I love, but I also pay attention to whether the relationship feels balanced and nourishing for both people.
When I do not feel that reciprocity anymore, I no longer force connection or chase people to choose me. I have learned to redirect my energy instead of overextending myself trying to maintain relationships that no longer align. That has been one of the most healing shifts for me.
When I feel truly safe with someone, I become very soft, grounded, playful, and deeply authentic. There is no performance, no hypervigilance, and no need to prove myself. Safety allows me to relax into who I naturally am. I can fully express my emotions, my thoughts, my humor, my depth, and my heart without fear of judgment or abandonment. For most of my life, I think I confused intensity, inconsistency, and emotional chasing with love, but real safety feels very different. It feels calm. It feels mutual. It feels like I can fully be myself without shrinking, overexplaining, or betraying my own needs to keep connection.
4. What's your relationship with money? Because environments like the one you grew up in often have very specific- and very damaging- things to say about women, ambition and wealth.
My relationship with money has been interesting because I grew up with two completely different messages around it. The religion taught that money was dangerous, worldly, and something that could pull you away from spirituality. Ambition was often discouraged, especially for women, because the focus was supposed to be on service, sacrifice, and devotion to the organization rather than building a life for yourself. But my father was the complete opposite. He loved money, valued success, and was very driven financially. While I saw firsthand how an unhealthy relationship with money and greed could impact a person, I am also grateful because he unintentionally showed me that having money itself was not wrong.
Even as a young girl, I knew I wanted freedom. I wanted to travel, experience life, and create a life where I was not trapped or dependent on anyone else. Deep down, I never fully believed that money was evil. I think I intuitively understood that money is simply a tool, and like anything else, it depends on the hands and intentions behind it. Money can absolutely be used for good. It can create safety, opportunities, healing, experiences, generosity, and the ability to help yourself, your family, and causes you deeply care about.
I no longer view wealth the way most people do. I do not equate wealth solely to the number in my bank account. To me, wealth is a state of being. It is peace. Freedom. Health. Purpose. Alignment. Time with my children. The ability to wake up and genuinely love the life I have created. When I embody worthiness and abundance internally, opportunities and support naturally flow into my life. I have learned that abundance starts in the nervous system and in the belief that you are worthy of receiving.
Money, for me, represents freedom. After living so much of my life feeling psychologically trapped, I deeply value the freedom that financial stability provides. I love being able to create a comfortable life for myself and my family, to travel, to experience beauty, and to support the people and things I care about. I believe you can enjoy beautiful things, live freely, and still remain deeply humble and grounded. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
5. What's your relationship with God, spirituality or something bigger than yourself now- and is that the most complicated question anyone could ask you?
That is probably one of the most complicated questions anyone could ask me now, because my relationship with God and spirituality has completely transformed over the years and still continues to evolve. I do not know that I can fully articulate it yet, because it feels more like something I experience and feel rather than something I can neatly define. What I do know is that I no longer believe in a distant “sky daddy” sitting above me judging, monitoring, or condemning me. I no longer believe love from God is conditional or something that can be revoked because of human imperfection.
What I believe now is that we all carry a direct connection to the source of love itself, because we came from that source. I believe that connection has always existed within us. Ironically, while I was deeply immersed in religion, I never actually felt connected to God in the way I do now. Religion taught me fear, performance, guilt, and self monitoring, but it never truly taught me connection, embodiment, or self trust.
The deeper I began healing, loving myself, regulating my nervous system, and seeing humanity through a more compassionate lens, the more connected I felt to something greater than myself. I stopped viewing people through the black and white lens of judgment that I had been conditioned into inside religion, and instead began seeing how deeply wounded, human, and interconnected we all are.
What I know with certainty now is that whatever created this earth, this universe, and all of us is deeply loving. I no longer believe this life is about proving my worth, earning love, or constantly fearing punishment. I think this entire journey has really been about remembering that I never had to outsource my worth, love, acceptance, or connection to something outside of myself. It was always here. It never left.
6. What does a bad day look like for you now? Not a trauma response, not a spiral- just a regular hard day. How do you actually handle it?
A hard day for me now usually looks less like a trauma spiral and more like getting stuck in self blame and emotional heaviness, especially when it comes to my children. I care so deeply about them that when they are struggling, hurting, or going through something difficult, I often internalize it as a reflection of me as a mother. I can slip into guilt and shame very quickly, feeling like somehow I should have protected them from every hardship or made life easier for them. There is still a part of me that wants to fix everything for the people I love so they never have to feel pain.
But I have also learned that part of healing is understanding that my children have their own journey, their own lessons, and their own path to walk. My job is not to control every outcome or remove every struggle. My job is to love them, support them, guide them, and create emotional safety while also allowing them the space to become who they are meant to become.
A hard day also looks like grief. Even after all the healing work I have done, grief still visits me. At the end of the day, I lost my family, my friends, and the entire community I grew up in. That is not a small loss. It is a devastating one, and I do not know that someone ever fully “gets over” something like that. I think you simply learn how to carry it differently over time.
Some days the grief hits unexpectedly. I will see a mother and daughter together and feel this ache rise in my chest that makes me want to cry for what I never had or what I lost. Other days, I can look at that same moment and simply feel grateful that they have each other. I think healing has taught me that emotions are not permanent, they move like waves, and I no longer fight them the way I used to.
Now, instead of trying to suppress my emotions or judge myself for having them, I allow myself to feel whatever is surfacing in the moment. Some days I need rest. Some days I need to cry. Some days I need solitude, grounding, music, nature, movement, or connection. I have stopped expecting myself to be emotionally perfect all the time. I think being human means allowing space for all of it, the joy, the grief, the love, the heaviness, and the healing that still continues.
The Podcast Deets.
Imagine waking up and finding out that you’ve been living inside an abusive cult for 36 years of your life... and you didn’t even know it. Beyond terrifying, right?
Well today’s Friday’s with Friends guest, Brooke Deanne, is walking us through exactly what that moment looked like for her- including the moments that led up to it and the entire aftermath that followed.
We’re diving deep into religious trauma, the ‘taboo’ parts of spirituality that no one wants to talk about, and the massive impact that this type of childhood environment had on her and her life.
Together we explore what it’s like to walk away from everything you’ve ever known, rewrite your entire identity, and ultimately- choose a path for your life that others might not understand or support.
This episode is equal parts juicy and wild- and you don’t want to miss a second of it.
So let’s dive in now, shall we?
I Was In A Cult For 36 Years [with Brooke Deanne]