Religious Trauma
Did you grow up religious? In the church? Were you impacted by Purity Culture? Are you trying to figure out what the hell you believe after being taught one thing about the world?
Religious Trauma is a syndrome that is not an official diagnosis referring to the trauma that occurs when someone leaves their religion and suffers from symptoms similar to that of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) because of the psychological, emotional, sexual, and/or physical abuse occurred within the indoctrination.
And, just a note that religion can be very important to communities and people groups. It’s not all bad. Religion becomes bad when it indoctrinates folks into rigid and troublesome narratives that disconnect them from their own thoughts, bodies, and feelings.
Religious Trauma symptoms and experiences can show up as
anxiety,
poor sleep,
depression,
significant difficulty trusting yourself,
lack of awareness around sex and bodies,
indecisiveness,
low self-esteem,
difficulty differentiating self,
struggling with sexuality and gender identity,
feeling othered and misunderstood,
difficulty connecting with your body,
and more.
These symptoms and experiences can feel alienating and make it difficult to have relationships with others who don’t understand your background. This can lead to self-criticism, doubt, and loneliness. Belonging is important. But what happens when we no longer belong to the community we were apart of?
In therapy, we can work together to extract your past and identify the ways that you have been hurt, betrayed, or mislead by rigid, man-made ideologies that have done real harm to you. I find that one of the most important parts of healing from religious trauma is naming the misdoing and validating the pain that has been caused. Our bodies store information and pain needs to be witnessed to be felt and moved through. From this point, we can work together to reclaim and redefine what spirituality looks like for you, on your own terms and in the ways that are safe for you.
Working with folks on healing from religious trauma is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. I myself have been able to heal from, and continue to heal, from the religious trauma of my upbringing and of Puritanical society at large. I say this because it’s important for me to let you know that I get it, and your Christianese will make sense to me. Let’s start this unraveling and reclamation together.
VIDEO/AUDIO OPTION: If you’d like, you can watch this podcast video between Caitlin and therapist Julia Schwab, LMFT, in which I describe Religious Trauma Syndrome and some of my own experience with religious trauma (please note this video is from 2022). Additionally, in this video from the same interview, I describe some of the mental health symptoms from religious trauma.