Yes, Religious Trauma is a Real Thing, and Therapy Can Help
From a Religious Trauma Therapist in Platte Park, Denver
When most of us hear words like “trauma” or “PTSD” we tend to think about military veterans, or maybe people who were in a severe accident or children who have been abused. But religious trauma? Not usually the first thing that comes to mind. That’s because many people don’t realize that someone can be harmed by religion, let alone experience symptoms of trauma because of it. This is often true even for the people who have experienced it themselves. Let’s shed some light on religious trauma, and how to get help.
What is Religious Trauma and Indoctrination?
To start, we need to distinguish between faith, religion, spirituality, and indoctrination. Personally, I use faith, religion, and spirituality interchangeably to refer to someone’s personal spiritual beliefs, while understanding that each of these words have different meanings to different people. I’m not here to bash anyone’s personal beliefs. It is well known that faith has many positive effects for billions of people around the world. Faith can give people a reason to live, to have hope, to love others, and much more.
The prerequisite for religious trauma is actually not just religion, but indoctrination. Indoctrination is generally defined as the process of teaching a person (or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically and unconditionally. Not all faith communities include indoctrination. But the reality is that many faith communities from very mainstream religions do have components of indoctrination. As a religious trauma therapist, I don’t actually work with a lot of clients who experienced religious trauma in a fringe, obscure cult. Usually, my clients who are religious trauma survivors experienced it in mainstream religions.
I want to explain what religious trauma is by also explaining two other important terms: deconstruction and spiritual abuse.
Deconstruction and Spiritual Abuse
Deconstruction is the process of questioning, changing, or dismantling previously held spiritual beliefs and/or practices. Sometimes, deconstruction includes leaving one’s religious community and identity. Deconstruction often includes a process of grieving and loss, but it may or may not be experienced as traumatic. Spiritual abuse is abuse that is caused by a person with spiritual authority and power and affects another person, typically someone who doesn’t hold that same level of authority or power. It can involve manipulation, neglect, identity denial or rejection, or coercion, and it results in an experience of trauma. Spiritual abuse may occur in conjunction with other forms of abuse, such as physical, mental, or sexual abuse. Religious trauma falls somewhere in between these two. Religious trauma is when experiences of religious or spiritual indoctrination lead to harm that is experienced as trauma.
What Causes Religious Trauma?
Ultimately, this answer is different for each person. But there are several aspects of indoctrination that commonly lead to experiences of religious trauma.
Losses of Indoctrination
Losses of indoctrination refer to the healthy experiences that people don’t get to have because of their indoctrination. Some of these losses are healthy developmental experiences, the freedom to make mistakes, freedom to determine one’s own boundaries, freedom of emotion and vulnerability, critical thinking, bodily autonomy, political freedom, & the freedom to choose relationships. These tend to occur most strongly when someone has been raised in an indoctrinating system since childhood.
Burdens of Indoctrination
Burdens of indoctrination refer to the extra responsibilities (physical, mental, or emotional) that are put on people in indoctrinating systems. Some of these include persistent guilt and shame, expecting children to adopt abstract and frightening concepts, strict expectations of behavior, the personal responsibility to convert others, expectations to suppress “unacceptable” parts of oneself, and the expectation to reject others who don’t adhere to the shared worldview (unless actively proselytizing).
If you’re reading this and wondering if you’ve experienced religious trauma, these examples may be helpful to make these concepts easier to relate to in real life.
If you were raised in a highly evangelical indoctrinating system, you may have known by a very young age that you were deserving of Hell (Spirit Prison, Jahannam, Sheol, etc.) and that you would go there after you died if you didn’t maintain your faith’s beliefs and practices (Salvation or something similar). While many of us grew up with these concepts, it’s actually incredibly complex, abstract, and frightening when you think about it. And if you knew that you and others deserved Hell if they didn’t know your God, you may have also felt the burden to share your faith with others and convert them. After all, if you truly cared about someone, you wouldn’t want them to experience a terrible afterlife….right? This is an example of the burden to convert others.
How Do the Losses and Burdens Become Religious Trauma?
Often, the losses and burdens of indoctrination result in religious trauma when an individual begins to have experiences that create cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance basically means that you experience inconsistent or contradictory thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes. Perhaps you were taught that people who didn’t share your faith were deceitful, willfully ignorant, or maybe just bad people. But then you meet someone who doesn’t share your faith and is a wonderful person, and it feels pretty confusing. This is cognitive dissonance. The more dissonance a person experiences between their faith’s teachings and their own thoughts, feelings, or experience, the more intense the religious trauma often feels.
Religious trauma can also occur due to traumatic experiences that happen as a result of faith deconstruction. There can be very real and severe consequences to questioning or leaving one’s faith. You may lose relationships, your worldview and sense of certainty, your education, your career, your reputation, or your identity. You may even experience a form of excommunication from your family and friends. These experiences are incredibly painful.
Another way religious trauma shows up is when you accept an identity in yourself that you had to previously suppress or reject, and then face the consequences from the indoctrination system. This could look like coming out as LGBTQ+ in a non-affirming faith community, choosing a relationship or career path that your faith doesn’t approve of, publicly asking questions, or abandoning your identity as a member of that religion. If this resonates with you, explore our services page on religious trauma therapy for LBGTQ+ clients.
Symptoms of Religious Trauma
If some of the causes of religious trauma are resonating, you may now be wondering what the effects, or symptoms, of religious trauma are. Many people who seek therapy for religious trauma don’t actually know that’s what they’re in therapy for. They often come in with concerns like depression, anxiety, grief, or anger. A good therapist can help you determine whether those concerns are related to something like religious trauma or not.
Experiencing religious trauma through an indoctrination system can result in symptoms like these. Please know that this list certainly isn’t exhaustive, but can be a good starting point.
Struggling to think critically
Negative beliefs about self, others, and the world
Difficulty making decisions
Feeling depressed, anxious, lethargic, or angry
A sense of feeling directionless and alone
A lack of pleasure or interest in things you used to enjoy
Sexual concerns and/or shame
Sleep problems
Feeling isolated, like you don’t belong anywhere
Feeling “behind the times” with current events and culture
The reason so many people initially think they have depression, anxiety, or something else besides religious trauma at the beginning is because these are all symptoms! Some of the above symptoms relate to clinical depression, anxiety, grief, and PTSD. It’s also important to know that you may have symptoms related to these other concerns that have nothing to do with religious trauma, and that’s okay too. Your therapist can help you parse out what’s what over time so you can truly get the support you need.
How Does Therapy Help Religious Trauma?
Therapy can be an incredibly helpful tool for recovering from religious trauma. First of all, therapy offers a safe place to process your story. Many of my religious trauma clients have told me that I was the very first person who believed them and validated their experiences. If you’re in that place of wondering whether your experiences were real, I want to tell you now that they were, and you deserve to share your story with someone that will truly listen and hold space for you.
There are also ways that specific therapies can help you untangle some of the cognitive dissonance, confusion, and shame. Theological concepts can get buried so deeply in our brains that they truly become core beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. In therapy, you can start to pull apart which core beliefs are truly accurate and helpful, and which ones are just harmful. A therapist can help you gradually shift those beliefs to ones that truly align with who you are.
Finally, religious trauma therapy is trauma therapy! That means that seeing a trauma specialist can be really helpful, because religious trauma has many underlying similarities to other forms of trauma. Forms of evidenced-based therapy for trauma such as EMDR Therapy and Somatic Trauma Therapy can be great choices.
Next Steps
If you’re looking for support for religious trauma in Colorado, our therapists at CZ Therapy Group in Platt Park, Denver specialize in religious trauma therapy and are ready to help. Feel free to contact us for a free consult call!
If you’re outside of Colorado, I highly recommend the therapy directory at Reclamation Collective, which lists providers in many states across the US who specialize in religious trauma.