Healing Sacred Wounds with SC Nealy

0:00I'll come back up pretty cool. At Amika Insurance, we know you'll always find ways to look out for the people you love. And with Amika Life Insurance, we'll help build a plan to make sure you always can. We're here to help protect the life you've built. Amika, empathy is our best policy. Visit Amika.com and get a quote today. Springtime is almost here. And if you've been itching to redo every room in your home, Bob's discount furniture can help. When you shop at Bob's, you get wow-worthy everyday low prices on fabulous furniture for every room. Everything from stylish mid-century dining sets and top-rated Bob-O-Pedic mattresses with the best warranties in the business to pop up sleepers sectionals all for a fraction of what they cost elsewhere. So, stop inner shop online and get wow-worthy pieces for less. Only at Bob's. Welcome to the Trauma Thipper's podcast.

1:00My name is Giaming Furson. I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show. So, five, four, three, two, and one. Our folks welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have us, my guest today. Dr. S. C. Neely, S. C. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm actually not a doctor, just a LPC. Okay. S. C. is a trauma-informed psychotherapist, educator, and advocate specializing in religious trauma, complex developmental and sexual trauma, couples and queer, non-binary relationships, and neurodiversity of firming therapy. With more than 15 years of experience, they founded the LGBTQ+, counseling collaborative in the Washington, D.C. area, and served as clinical director, landing a team of queer and gender diverse therapists. Their direct compassion approach supports clients in unpacking past harm, reclaiming identity,

2:03in healing across the gender and sexuality spectrum. All right, S. C. Just a little bit about you, but before we get going, share with the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently, and then we'll dive in. I always, like, answer two different things to that as I feel like you have your childhood where you from and then your adult where you from, and I only resonate with my adult where I'm from, so I always say like the Washington, D.C. area, even though I didn't grow up here as a child, like this is where I grew up as a human, and so this is my home. Okay. So let's dive in. How did this journey start for you? Well, when I was a kid, and I guess this kind of ties into what I was just saying, when I was a kid, I grew up in a very like evangelical conservative cult setting in a very rural area in Virginia, and the impact of that was lifelong and will continue to be. As I got older and was able to entangle myself from a lot of those experiences and settings and community, I was able

3:08to start to find myself a lot more and found myself really interested in helping other people to be able to do the same, which led me down the therapist route. All right, hang on, hang on, let's see. You are zooming, zooming through your story. You're like, I grew up in an evangelical cult like situate cult. Was it a cult? Wow. It's not like that name, you know, they didn't call it that themselves, but like, you know, we didn't have access to outside media or anything like that, you know, as a girl, I wasn't allowed to wear pants or cut my hair. Everything was made in house, the men were in charge of the home, and we all weren't, you know, at the same church, the same like leadership. So all hallmarks of a cult, basically. How, okay, so how long were you in that situation environment? Let's see, I think age is like one or two is when we move down there. Obviously, I don't remember

4:12that specifically, but from what I've been told. And then we got out around age eight when I was eight. And only because the cult imploded, like, you know, it's pretty common. You have narcissistic leadership. There's infighting those kinds of things can fall apart. And so then we moved up to Maryland where we just kind of joined like a larger cult in the covenant sect of Christianity. And if you're, you know, familiar with covenant teachings, it's pretty conservative and just, but just done in like a mega church style. So same thing, different setting. And so then we were in that for several until I was 13. And then I left home at 13. So. Wow. Yeah. How were you able to leave? Oh, it's kicked out. Okay. What happened? Not surprisingly, I was a deeply unhappy child after the things that had happened to me, you know, in the first cult setting, I'd been abused by

5:15leadership and groomed to become the pastor's wife in the future or some sort of something in that sexual realm. And so that was really rough on me. And, you know, when you don't get any help for that or everyone's telling you, well, that's your godly duty as a woman or whatever, um, you tend to be an angry kid. So I did a lot of fighting. I was angry. I was, it, I lashed out at a lot of people. And, um, yeah. So when I was 13, my dad was like, I just get out. So did you, was this something you shared with your parents? Yeah. Yeah. And were they like, this is what you have to do? That was the expectation. They actually made me write an apology letter to the man, the leader, um, first landering his good Christian name and, uh, saying out loud, what he had done. And, um, told me to keep it to myself and not say anything else. So you leave, I mean, come, yeah. What are you, yeah, pretty bad. So you leave and what happens?

6:20What do you do? Where do you go? Um, I bounced around other family members mostly. Um, I bounced around like, uh, several different aunts really helped me and some friends, um, grandparents. So just kind of a little bit of, yeah, we'll couch surfing everywhere for a couple of months here, a couple of months there all around. Okay. So how are you managing psychologically, physically during this time? Oh, definitely not well. Really, really not well. I, um, really took it out on my body, right? Like, you know, trauma, trauma to my body and my mind, of course, as well. Um, and so I just became the next perpetrator to harm my own self and my own body and, um, that took quite some time to unpack for myself. I would say it wasn't until like high school graduation and like feeling truly free to like leave, you know, be 18 and like leave not needing any adults around, um, that I started to work a lot on healing, um, and figuring out like who I wanted to be, but it would still take me

7:24another 10 years after that before I'd feel much more whole. It wasn't until my late 20s that I felt like I really had gotten to a much better place in life and my own healing journey. How did you come to realize who you wanted to be and who did you want to be? I mean, I think I, I hope I never fully answer that question, right? I think I hope I'm always kind of like searching and continuing that journey, right? I know who I want to be right now, but like in 10 years from now, I, I'm excited to find out who that will be, right? Um, I know that I was, I wanted to stop running from who I was that for sure I wanted to do and I just didn't know how to like slow down and stop and listen and, you know, the first time I was called a lesbian, I was six and it was in the cult and it was the leadership yelling at my father saying if you're not a better, you know, Christian stronger man, your daughter is going to be a lesbian. She's already showing signs of being a lesbian. I don't know what I was doing at age six to show signs of that,

8:25nor does I know what a lesbian was. And I was like, oh, God, that sounds so scary. Um, turns out it's actually really great. Really until I like fully embrace my sexuality and came out, um, which I didn't fully do until my early 30s. I was like out as like bisexual in my late 20s, um, but it really wasn't until my early 30s that I was like, no, I'm definitely not by. I'm definitely just a lesbian. Um, so that would take a lot of time. And frankly, it took a lot of love and support from the people who have chosen to be in my life, um, for me to feel safe enough to like pour back into myself in that way. The episode was brought to you by Jane, a practice management software and EMR that helps clinicians run their practice without the constant admin overload. If you're juggling scheduling notes and billing across different tools, Jane brings it all together in one place. Payments are recorded automatically. Billings stays accurate and new clients can actually find your

9:27practice online to see how Jane can simplify your workflow. Book a demo at Jane.app and use the code guy one mo for one month grace period. That's Jane.app and use the code guy the number one mo for one month grace period. They say if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. At Amica Insurance, we know what matters most to you. And we work even harder to protect it together. As a mutual insurance company, we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs. Amica, empathy is our best policy. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. So at some point, you decide, well, were you in school? I mean, you were talking about the 30s. So obviously you had gone through school or did you go through college at that point?

10:31Yeah. So I went straight to college out of high school. And then I went straight to get a master's after that in forensic psychology. And I worked in the criminal justice system for a bit. And that was not a fit for me. I did love it, but I think that was more of a journey of me trying to unpack things that had happened to me versus what I actually wanted to do with my life. And so I went back to grad school again in my late 20s and to get my clinical psychology degree. And I gave birth to my first daughter two days after one day, after my last final, like right around this week, as well, while timing. And then COVID hit. So that was great. So it was busy, but yeah, so it's been a while. So how did you come to found the LGBTQ plus counseling collaborative? I mean, that's one thing to pursue becoming a therapist or psychology. It's another thing to

11:36completely found your own show. How did that happen? I have always like had a bit of the entrepreneurial bug. I think that's just like intrinsic to my nature and who I am. I also think I'm a much better boss than employee. I just don't like being told what to do. And I would much prefer to be in the boss role. So I think a lot of it is just has to do with my personality. But then in terms of like why specifically this company is, you know, I worked throughout my 20s. I worked in like inpatient, residential, assisted living in home services. I did a lot of work in the community before deciding to, you know, pursue clinical psych and work in like private practice. And then when I did work in a bunch of private practice and my experiences before then, I really found that like my sexuality was either tokenized in the setting, right? Or I would feel like I'd have to mask a lot or, you know, fit in with a cis-hat world. And that was the struggle. And then I also just I

12:37intrinsically do not like this standard way a lot of group practices are run in which it is on the backs of the therapist. And then the therapists are kind of struggling to pay their own bills, but meant to still show up for like their clients while they're still trying to make ends meet. I know that there are so many amazing group practices that do it better. But a lot of the ones I worked at like I was taking home scraps and it was like the only answer to that was we'll see more clients, you know, versus like we'll take care of yourself. And so I really wanted to create a model in which my clinicians would feel really financially secure and be able to come into work and show up for their clients without having that anxiety of their own. And so it was really important to me to build something myself that I didn't have to build at the expense of people who worked underneath me, but that I would be an asset to them versus the other way around. And so I've really tailored how I've created this company to put the clinicians at the first and then the clients at the second. And the reason I do that is I think if I put the clinicians first

13:41and their happiness first and their finances first and what they need first and making sure they have full benefits and all the things, then the clients are going to get the best clinicians. Kind of like putting your your mask on first before you put it on your child. But so more specifically when you talk about like oftentimes other group practices are put on the backs of of the clinicians, what do you mean? What are you talking about specifically? A lot of practices that I work at and obviously I know that there are great ones out there that don't do it. You know the clinician was 1099 didn't get any benefits was getting a small cut and then also was responsible for bringing all their own clients doing all their own marketing doing all the things that like they could just go do themselves and make the full money and not like the split or the smaller fee. And so I really didn't want to do that where people just felt like oh I have to see more clients in order to meet my bills but actually like could sustain and live really comfortably on just seeing

14:43the 20 people a week. Okay so you didn't just found a counseling company you founded the LGBTQ plus counseling collaborative. What did that mean to you? Why was that important to you? I mean obviously you identify as a lesbian but say more about that. Well I mean I love like being at work all day around people with similar lived identities or experiences and roles and like that we understand each other in a different way but I also think the collaborative piece is what's super important to me of like it's important to me that everyone knows each other here that we meet and do case consultations together. There were also there for each other personally if need be and that we also collaborate a lot with other entities around us right. We do a lot of work where we collaborate with other with nonprofits in the area to make sure we're giving back to like other companies and people that need help that we're collaborating with companies to help their clients in other ways. We also do a lot of collaboration like politically and within legislation

15:46of making sure we're meeting regularly with senators and folks in elected positions and saying like hey this is what we're seeing in the queer community from our clients this is what we need to be doing differently on the hill. Here's what we need to be doing in Virginia. Virginia is kind of far behind and a lot of queer rights everything we're getting better but we're definitely far behind. So for me it's important of like that the therapists are all like living the same values that we're telling our clients and we're out here advocating and we're out here working together and we're out here trying to make the world better place. So I love it. What do you see in terms of I think it's interesting that you're in Washington DC at this time with everything going on in terms of access to to care access to therapy. What are you seeing in terms of

16:49queer access? Sure. I would say you know in where we are right now we are disproportionately impacted by what's happening in the government right that's so many of our clients and the people around us and our neighbors work for the government or used to work for the government and we're you know either like go or we're furloughed for a month plus or all these different things right so we're seeing like day-to-day impacts in our life and how difficult that is and so obviously the biggest strain that makes is like for finances. We're also seeing a lot of hesitancy and you know we we personally don't take insurance because of privacy issues right so we're seeing a lot of hesitancy in the queer community to access resources in which they're afraid their information is going to be documented or used against them right and so like if we took insurance they would require more documentation than they actually need and that could we don't know what could be done with that and so we won't do that so we are a private pay only which is a huge barrier to a lot of people and we try to mitigate that by 25% of everyone's caseload is required to be sliding scale or pro bono

17:55so we do like still keep that accessible component we also will like partner with non-profits or organizations that provide grants so like we'll partner with asylum works that provides you know 12 sessions to immigrants and refugees through us or kind of support who does the same thing but for sex workers right so we'll find ways to make it as accessible as we can to people but not at the impact of like our clinicians struggling to pay their own bills kind of thing in terms of your own experience spring times the perfect time to turn the page and refresh your home style the only problem it can be expensive luckily there's a better way to shop well-worthy pieces for less at Bob's discount furniture Bob's negotiates with manufacturers to get you the best everyday low prices giving the shopping power back to you the power to get more style comfort and quality for less on amazing pieces like stylish mid-century dining sets made for hosting those big spring branches pop up sleeper sectionals with all the bells and whistles so you can turn any room into a guest room and next level Bobo-Pedic mattresses

19:01so you can get a great night's rest after you've finished redecorating every room so when you're ready to spring into new style stop into your nearest store or shop online and see how you can get well-worthy style for less with Bob's discount furniture how was it for you showing up as yourself authentically as yourself when you started working with your clients I think it took some time to like ease into it right to feel like really comfortable when I first started in private practice you know you come out of grad school and you are so told not to self-disclose a single thing and keep everything quiet or like everyone's lives will be ruined and so that took some time for me to unlearn and I understand why we're told that in grad school because so many new clinicians can't self-disclose properly right but I wish they'd kind of told me

20:01that of like hey learn and practice it before you do it versus just never do it because within the queer community and not just queer me there's so many different populations like anyone I work a lot with complex trauma and religious trauma obviously and you can't do that work without a self-disclosing that you have it have had that too right because I don't want to go to a therapist and work on my religious trauma if they've never been a church and don't know what I'm talking about right like if there is you just have to have some commonalities in order to do that work and so the self-disclosure not only important to them but so important to me to show up authentically in that space of like I get it I've been there I'm I'm still working through it too um so for me it took some time to to turn off that no self-disclosure language and figure out okay how do I show up as myself and what does that look like and given that like the company is called LGBT counseling collaborative you're already automatically self-disclosing right like our already people know so then how do you continue to self-disclose more while making sure it's still beneficial to the client um and I think

21:04that's just been a process over time to figure out I feel pretty comfortable about it now I think it depends on the client and their their comfortability as well but sure I feel pretty pretty comfortable now and who are your clients are they strictly LGBT queer community no definitely not um I would say the majority are for sure but we also get a lot of like parents to a queer trans youth right or family members or allies you know who still just have something like really want to work through religious trauma and maybe it has nothing to do with queerness but like I'm known for religious trauma work in this area and so they're gonna come see me for it or like other people at the practice you know have a specialty and something that they're like oh I really enjoy that specialty and maybe the queerness part of it doesn't really matter um so it kind of depends but even for those who are not within the queer community um I'm still very openly myself and queer

22:05in terms of uh this is kind of a broad question I mean I and again obviously you're in some might say like the heart of what's going on right now with access to care and the queer community across the the states the nation what would you say is going on now with in terms of queer community and access to care um well I mean I can speak a little more accurately for my area versus all over but I will say um that there is just a lot of fear in being queer or trans or gender diverse or any sort of anything that doesn't fall within the cis-hat you know neurotypical world um because you know we we are being targeted right now and there is no saying what is going to happen and we have three-ish plus more years of who knows and so I think because there's so much fear around

23:10we don't know what's going to happen but we do know it's not going to be good for us um I think there is a lot of like you know batting down the hatches kind of thing of like okay I need to like make sure I'm really paying attention to who do I trust who do I talk to who do I let into my circles and I think that that if you don't have a lot of um resources in your area for queer therapy specifically queer of not just queer affirming but like queer celebratory or queer identifying themselves then it can probably I would imagine be a barrier to choosing to start therapy or continue with therapy if you're like I don't know if my notes are going to get used against me in the future right I don't know if I want it written down that I'm you know going through xyz or whatever it is um so I think the fear would be the biggest thing you know we do get a lot of requests from people across the country and you know depending on our licensures we try to accommodate as much as possible but we get a lot of people who are like yeah I can't find a single queer therapist in this area like I just need to talk to somebody so and when that happens what for example

24:11we have a lot of therapists listening to this podcast for those maybe who aren't queer I mean do you feel it's important for a queer client to see a queer therapist um not necessarily I think it depends on their background and what they've experienced there are you know there are some queer folks who have grown up and really like affirming families and their identity has never been a huge question for them and they're that's not been a part of their mental health struggles and maybe their mental struggles have been part of other identities or other experiences they've had and in those scenarios like any you know any therapist can certainly help um I personally feel like because of you know how how huge a part of my identity queerness has been um it's a big thing for me but that being said my personal therapist is not queer um she has a mother and that I really needed that at that time and I was like I need have I need to have a therapist who's a mother who understands what I'm going through as a mother um my my oldest child was born with a lot of medical

25:14issues um and so I needed I was like I need a mother right and so I think it's the same ways like what are you trying to work on and if it's related to your queerness or your identity or your comfort or your support systems or things like that then yeah I think having a queer therapist sitting across from you who one understands your experiences more so who you don't have to explain yourself to I think it'd be really really helpful so let's talk about specifically what you folks do at the LGBT community council and collaborative how do you work um is do you work with other therapists and if so how would you offer etc yeah we do a little of everything like we definitely you know do individual therapy um adolescents and up uh we do a lot of couples and relationships we love couples work in relationship work including non-traditional um relationship dynamics as well uh we definitely do a lot of group therapy we are big believers in like what is hurt in groups can be healed in groups and your first group is often your family and so whatever you experience back then you can

26:16really work towards healing within a group setting so we really love that we also do a lot of trainings and workshops for clients but also for therapists we go into businesses a lot to like tell them like here's how you can be queer celebratory for your your employees and your client base um and really trying to make like the community at large safer for all of us um and then we do a lot of activism work we really enjoy working with other organizations in the community and showing up um at you know there's obviously DC like that all kinds of political and activism events here that we get to do um we do ADHD and autism testing and psychological evaluations um we have a psychologist on staff who does that and let's see what else do we do um yeah that's a lot that's a lot and so all right um the book healing secret wounds coming out August 2026 is that correct next fall yeah next fall

27:16okay um healing secret wounds a guide to overcoming from religious and spiritual trauma obviously you talked a little bit about that from your own life how did the book come about well the book has been a long time coming um I wrote it um four or five years ago and it took me three to four years to get it picked up by a publisher because I just kept hearing from each rejection that religious trauma wasn't a thing um wasn't a popular thing or just didn't exist didn't exist they're like this is it so now that then you know as we got into like 2020 2021 and we started to have more books about it and more people talking about it more openly mainstream obviously we've been talking about it longer but it really did take until the last five years for it to become a more mainstream concept outside of the psychological field um then then you know it got picked up and obviously I've updated it for the times since when I originally

28:16wrote it um and it's really meant to be kind of a beginner's guide for some and for others it can be a way to just kind of continue furthering the work you're already doing it's also really meant to be um non biased as much as possible in terms of you know I believe that trauma is human-based and not belief spirituality based right it's that humans cause trauma and oppressive systems that are led by humans cause trauma and so I don't push an ideology of like you have to deconstruct or you have to do this like I wanted to make a book that somebody could choose to stay in a church and just learn how to do it in a healthy way if they wanted to and that somebody could choose to leave a church or leave a religion and figure out how to do that in a healthy way I wanted it to be able to be about you and what's healthiest for you versus me telling you what you should or shouldn't believe um so that's kind of my goal with a book and specifically just give us an idea of how you do that in the book how you wanted to do that in the book well I guess you know if you read it

29:19you'll see um if I do that accurately or not but the goal is really to give a lot more information of like how to if you grew up in in a high demand high control religion you were specifically not taught how to critically think in fact you were actively taught that you can't do that obedience above all and so that doesn't allow for that skill set to be learned and we have to kind of go back and repair ourselves a little of like okay here's how we practice critical thinking and turning off that black and white and here's what this looks like and you get to decide for yourself so a lot of it is like um asking more questions and asking people to probe more versus telling them um providing more framework for like here are different ways you can think what what's its best with you and then also you know one of the more complicated pieces of religious trauma specifically that sets it apart from other types of trauma is that in order to have religious trauma you've also most likely had to give religious trauma to other people right it's the type of thing where like in order to be in it you've had to do it to other people right and so you also have

30:24to practice compassion and forgiveness for yourself and what that looks like and think of all the times that you you shamed someone for not doing something you know Christian enough or whatever it were enough and all the times you harmed somebody with your beliefs and you oppressed somebody because that's how those things work right like they make you part of it and therefore you can't leave or won't leave and so that is a really just a complicating factor that is it takes a lot of time um to pull that apart for people all right is see um how do people learn more about you and the LGBTQ plus counseling collaborative as well as the book what's the best way? well uh the best way is definitely to go to our website i'll certainly be posting about the book on there as more information comes out it's lgbt counseling dmv.com and then also following me on social media on instagram or facebook um at sc neely nea al y um it's a great way as well

31:24awesome all right sc we'll have all this linked up at the show notes page here at the trauma therapist of podcast.com intense i see appreciate you being here appreciate it all right me take care and amica insurance we know it's not just about where you're going but who you go with that's why we work even harder to protect what matters most and as a mutual insurance company we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs amica empathy is our best policy visit amica.com and get a quote today springtime is almost here and if you've been itching to redo every room in your home

32:28bobs discount furniture can help when you shop at bobs you get well worth the everyday low prices on fabulous furniture for every room everything from stylish mid-century dining sets and top-rated bobo-pedic mattresses with the best warranties in the business to pop up sleepers sectionals all for a fraction of what they cost elsewhere so stop inner shop online and get well-worthy pieces for less only at bobs