‘One Tree Hill’ Alum Bethany Joy Lenz Credits “Wild, Vivid Dreams” with Helping Her Escape And Recover From Religious Cult

Since revealing that she was part of a cult for ten years, One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz has continued to open up about her past.

She told E! News that over time, she caught on to aspects of the cult that felt wrong, like having “an incredible amount of insecurity in what you believe.”

“I see it a lot in abusive relationships or in cult-ish group followings that we see popping up all over culture,” she explained. “If you’re too afraid to really empathize and hear someone else’s perspective, there’s something fundamentally unsettled about your theology or philosophy. You have to be able to listen and empathize because a truth is truth.”

While Lenz shared that she eventually “hit a breaking point,” there were various things that led to her departure from the unnamed cult, including some intervention from her OTH cast members. However, she highlighted having “wild, vivid dreams” surrounding her eventual escape from the cult after being “very frustrated in [her] faith.”

“I had lost a lot of it along the way,” she told the outlet. “And one of my prayers was just sort of like, ‘You have to just meet me where I am because I don’t even know if I know who you are anymore,’ And that’s how God just kept showing up for me in spite of the fact that I was thrusting a middle finger up into the air and being like, ‘Screw you!'” 

While acknowledging that “there’s lots of highs and lots of lows,” the actress noted that “at some point” she began asking herself questions like, “can I get off this ride, please? What’s wrong with me? Why am I so up and down all the time?”

“And sometimes it just takes a few people at the right moment saying, ‘It might not be anything wrong with you,'” she continued. “And that can be a relief.”

Lenz, who “love[s] stories,” has found expressive outlets through the iHeartPodcast Drama Queens alongside her OTH co-stars Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush, and through music, as she just released her single “Strawberries” in August. However, she also highlighted the power of writing, which she plans to pursue in her upcoming memoir.

“A memoir only comes, I think, when you’ve been through enough that you feel like you have something to share that would be meaningful for other people,” Lenz said. “So after having spent 10 years in this high demand group, I went through another 10 years of trauma therapy and recovery and figuring out how to heal from a lot of that. And in that time, part of my catharsis was writing.”

One Tree Hill is streaming on Hulu.