The Psychological Immigrant

Source: Armand Khoury/Unsplash

For as long as individuals have been leaving organized religion, faith communities, academics, mental health professionals, and folks in general have been racking their brains with the following questions:

• Why do some people leave religion or their faith community of origin?
• Why do some exiters seemingly adjust well to their new reality while others have a really difficult time rebuilding post-disaffiliation?

Opinions and theories on this matter are as plentiful and as varied as the amount of people engaged in these conversations. Some folks believe that only those with past adverse experiences ultimately end up leaving. Some posit that those who have left are doomed to a life of misery, while others claim that leaving is the ultimate path toward healing and self-actualization. Some even argue that there is a so-called hierarchy of justified (and less justified) reasons for leaving the fold.

The reality on the ground is way more complex and nuanced than any generalizable opinion uttered or theme identified; each and every individual who leaves, or contemplates leaving, has a unique lived experience, with personalized challenges and with their own narrative as to why they disaffiliated.

A recent study by Engelman et al. that surveyed 206 formerly Orthodox Jewish individuals, looks at Orthodox Jewish disaffiliation in a novel way, through the lens of immigration psychology, with an emphasis on religious disaffiliates who have left a covenantal religion. The authors operationally define a "covenantal religion" as:

"...one built upon theological foundations regarding social expectations of personal beliefs and public comportment. These expectations include ways of dressing, eating, speaking, gender roles, and family hierarchies. A large part of the life of covenantal communities is conducted separately from the larger society and from other religious groups. The behaviour restrictions of covenantal communities are mostly absent in the larger society and community members may speak a language different from the majority culture. Examples of covenantal traditions may include some Latter-day Saints, Amish, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslim, Sikh, and Orthodox Jews. We posit that covenantal communities institute formal and informal barriers to keep community members from integrating into the society at large. If a community member does not behave within the permissible bounds and rules of that community, that person may be shunned and ostracized."

Similar to the immigrant experience, transitioning out of a covenantal religious community is often associated with stress, loneliness, and isolation, poor physical and psychological health, lack of formal education, loss of livelihood and financial difficulties, lack of literacy in the native language, lack of familial and social support, and an overall difficulty adjusting to a new reality and environment.

Thus, the authors hypothesized that the experiences, processes, motivations, challenges, and outcomes of individuals exiting covenantal groups will, to some degree, mirror that of many migrants.

More specifically, inspired by findings in immigration psychology, they applied a theoretical framework often used in the study of human migration—the push-and-pull factors theory—to test whether individual scores on the push-pull paradigm will correlate with healthier outcomes.

Push factors: aspects that motivate the individual to leave their community or geographic location, such as familial dysfunction, abuse, shunning, restrictions, discrimination, hypocrisy, lack of happiness, feeling unsafe, etc. In immigration psychology, these are generally correlated with poorer outcomes.

Pull factors: aspects of the outside world or new geographic location that are attractive to the individual, such as increased autonomy, more diversity, and greater access to resources and different lifestyles. In immigration psychology, these are generally found to correlate with healthier outcomes.

Additionally, the researchers measured goal accomplishment—whether the individual believes that they successfully accomplished the goal(s) they had expected by disaffiliating. Findings in immigration psychology suggest that one's perception or belief that they successfully accomplished goals, which results in increased self-efficacy, is associated with healthier outcomes.

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What Is a Scientific Model?

The authors collected responses on a wide number of measures. However, for the sake of this relatively short blog post, in summary, the researchers looked at individual scores on 1) push factors, 2) pull factors, and 3) goals met, in order to see whether they correlate with, or can predict, scores on 1) psychological and emotional wellness, 2) perceived stress, 3) loneliness, and 4) overall health post-disaffiliation.

Finally, the authors also investigated potential gender differences.

Main findings:

• Push factors were significantly correlated with lower scores on psychological and emotional wellness, increased loneliness, and poorer overall health, even after controlling for personality type. Based on the intrinsically-adverse nature of push factors, it's no surprise that those experiences were associated with poorer, long-term outcomes.
• Surprisingly, unlike in the study of immigration psychology, pull factors were not significantly correlated with any of the outcome measures.
• Overall, women scored higher than men on both push and pull factors. However, there were no effects of gender on outcome measures.
• Having goals of disaffiliating met was associated with lower levels of perceived stress, decreased loneliness, and better overall health.

• 70% of participants reported that religion was of low-to-no importance to them.

• 87% of respondents reported that they left Orthodox Judaism because they no longer believed in its teachings, with significantly more men than women reporting loss of faith in a God as a motivation for leaving.

• Disaffiliating women put a higher priority on the lack of gender equality in their former communities as a motivator for disaffiliation.

• Desire for autonomy as a motivator for disaffiliating was consistent with previous research showing that individuals disaffiliated from Orthodox Jewish communities in pursuit of autonomy.

• 50% reported that they currently had either satisfactory or close relationships with religious family members.

• Men and women reported different trajectories for leaving their communities, suggesting a more accelerated disaffiliation process for men.

• 25% of males and 30% of females reported that they had experienced an unwanted sexual encounter within Orthodox Jewish communities.

Major takeaways:

First, it's worth noting and celebrating the groundbreaking application of the push-and-pull theoretical framework, originally used in immigration psychology, to better understand the lived experience of religious disaffiliation from a covenantal community. This novel model opens a new portal for future research and validates what many disaffiliates have been reporting for decades—feeling like an immigrant in their own country of birth.

Second, the most stunning finding in this study is the overwhelmingly-significant relationship between having goals of disaffiliation met and lower levels of perceived stress, decreased loneliness, and better overall health.

This suggests that a major factor contributing to an overall healthier quality of life post-disaffiliation is the individual's perception of having met their goal(s). Those who reported not having met their goals also reported overall poorer, long-term outcomes.

Here's the simple equation: Accomplishing one's goals of disaffiliating = increased self-efficacy = healthier self-image = overall better and long-term outcomes

A message to individuals (religious disaffiliates) who haven't yet—or who perceive that they haven't yet—accomplished their goals of disaffiliating:

Maybe you've left the fold to get away from something rather than to run toward something. Maybe your future-oriented goals aren't yet concrete or formulated. Maybe there's some work to do and some time to pass before future goals will be, or can be, accomplished.

I invite you to realize how massive of a goal you've already accomplished. Leaving, and even entertaining that possibility on a cognitive level, is a major goal accomplishment in and of itself. Most people don't even allow that thought into their consciousness. By the mere fact that you've opened up this new portal in your mind, let alone disaffiliated, you already have self-efficacy, resilience, and more courage than most.

Part of figuring out what we want our future to look like is shedding the past. The latter part is just as, if not more, important than the former. Figuring out what we no longer want to do or be is a vital part in figuring out what we do want to do or be. In life, we are constantly shedding old layers and beliefs, rebuilding, and reorienting.

When for most of our lives we've been made to doubt and suppress our personhood, thoughts, desires, needs, wants, and dreams, it becomes easy to allow others to re-frame our massive wins as losses and failures. Know that you have chosen to go down a path less traveled in an effort to protect and preserve your well-being and authenticity, and to hopefully create a better-for-you future. That is a goal accomplishment of epic proportions, 100% worth celebrating. No doubt the road ahead feels and is bumpy, but if you successfully pulled this off, you are absolutely capable and worthy of accomplishing further goals and building a bright, new future for yourself.