Religious Trauma

Religious Trauma:

• A specific type of trauma perpetuated by one’s religious community or leaders and/or justified with religious beliefs.

• Caused by difficulties healing from traumatic events and complex feelings when the path to healing seems like going against one’s core beliefs or against God.

• Sustained by imbalanced religious hierarchies or power structures, distorted doctrines, or cultural practices which reinforce abusive ways of thinking or relating.

• Leads to symptoms and impairments in functioning, especially in one’s religious or spiritual life, including one’s sense of self and the divine.

• Cured by seeing the truth about the trauma/abuse, processing the feelings towards the perpetrators, and correcting distortions in religious beliefs which were designed to allow and reinforce the abuse.

Traumatic events are brutal. They violate. They break. They wound.

But what if you are told the trauma was God’s plan for you? What if you are told the trauma was caused by your sin?

Or worse, what if the trauma was inflicted by those who are supposed to be representatives of the divine? Those who lead your religious community and whose spiritual authority you are supposed to follow?

What are you supposed to do?

For many, this creates incredible internal conflict:

Do I listen to myself and my feelings or my spiritual authorities?

Do I follow my religious leaders as I’ve been always told or do I stand up for myself?

I feel like I’m being coerced and manipulated, but who am I to disagree with the religious doctrines I’m being taught?

And what do I do if I speak up to my community and I’m dismissed, rejected, or not believed? What do I do when the community I rely on for help is siding with the person who committed the abuse?

Religious trauma symptoms can include:

• Shame

• Self-hatred, judgment, or loathing

• Felt need to punish oneself or seek punishment from others

• Perfectionism or need to be strictly morally pure

• Obsessive religious thinking and compulsive religious behaviors

• Spiritual/religious disorientation

• Feeling disconnected from one’s community

• Hiding, isolating from others

• Poor relational boundaries

• Sexual difficulties

Common associated diagnoses: 

• Religious or Spiritual Problem

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

• Other-Specified or Unspecific Trauma- or Stressor-Related Disorder

• Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS)

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

So what can we do?

At EmotionFit, we begin with a thorough sense of respect for your spiritual and religious tradition and community. We have our our faith traditions, and we know that faith can be a great gift.

But we also know that religion can be distorted and used for abusive purposes, often by those in positions of religious power.

So we are experts at walking that line. We listen to and respect your background and the core aspects of your faith (or lack thereof), and we help you identify and clarify religious abuse.

It’s only from this balance that many people safe to honestly face what occurred to them, without feeling like they are throwing the religious “baby out with the bath water.”

You can take a strong stand against abusive leaders and abusive doctrines, while at the same time deepening and enhancing your spiritual life.

We’ve helped hundreds of people on this journey of overcoming religious denial, facing and processing the complex and difficult emotions towards perpetrators of religious trauma, and separating true, loving religious doctrines, from distorted ones designed to perpetuate abuse.

Don’t suffer any longer from the effects of religious trauma.

Contact a therapist and begin the path of healing today.