Religious trauma is a complex and often overlooked phenomenon that can deeply affect an individual’s mental and emotional well-being. It occurs when a person’s experience of their particular religious beliefs or practices impacts them in such a way as to cause highly significant distress or harm. It can also occur when people use religion to justify engaging in abusive behaviors toward a vulnerable individual; this is sometimes referred to as ‘religious abuse.’
Religious trauma can lead to a variety of issues we see in therapy, including anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation, and harmful levels of guilt and shame. It can also cause a crisis of faith and subsequent changes to religious identity. Dr. Marlene Winell, a recognized expert that has developed understanding around Religious Trauma Syndrome, explains that people who have experienced this often feel betrayed by their religious community, their God, and their own beliefs. She also describes the kinds of traumatic effects that can emerge in some people’s religious experiences as a type of Complex Trauma, which is broadly understood as high-impact harm resulting from repeated and prolonged trauma. The impacts of this religious kind of trauma are similar to what might be observed in someone who has endured other commonly understood forms of traumatic experiences.
High-Involvement, High-Demand Religions and Religious Trauma
High-involvement religions range from more demanding faiths all the way to cults and other intensely controlling groups. The elevated involvement and rigidity can be particularly damaging for some and raise the likelihood that a member of the faith might experience religious trauma. These types of religions often demand strict adherence to doctrinal rules, and they can impose intense pressure to conform to the practices of the group. At times they may employ faith practices that lead easily to emotional manipulation, threaten social ostracism for failing to meet norms, and may even use physical or psychological abuse to control their members. A significant element of high-demand faiths is a reliance on fear as a motivator for behaviors that align with religious doctrines.
When individuals are either unable or opt not to fully comply with the demands of the religion and its culture and doctrines, they are more likely to experience feelings of guilt, shame, and even harsh self-judgment. We frequently hear people describing prolonged and deeply internalized beliefs that they are the problem, and that they are not good enough. This of course will frequently lead to depression, isolation, or other significant psychological distress. All too frequently, it is some of the most vulnerable, historically oppressed groups of individuals that experience the most heightened distress and trauma as they try to navigate the high demands of their faith.
Related: Navigating Your Faith Crisis or Faith Transition
For some, making the decision to leave a high-involvement religion can also be traumatizing, as individuals risk being cut off from family, friends, and their former community, or even face active forms of retaliation from that community. When compared to more flexible, less controlling religious groups, people that go through crises of faith and subsequent transitions away from high-demand faiths often face long, difficult, and complicated adjustments–quite different from what people remaining in the faith might imagine.
An Important Clarification about the Impact of Religion
It’s important to acknowledge that not all people have the same experiences with religion. While some people may feel traumatized or hurt by their experiences with religion, many do not; and in fact, research suggests that plenty of people derive a variety of benefits from religious participation. Of course, this isn’t universally the case, and not everyone finds comfort or benefits in their faith. However, religious participation can offer a multitude of benefits for some people, including a sense of community, comfort, and guidance. Many individuals find solace in religious rituals and practices that help them cope with challenges and uncertainties inherent in life.
Religious Abuse: A Key Contributor to Religious Trauma
Religious abuse is a particularly multi-layered and complex kind of abuse that can occur in trusted religious institutions and within highly religious homes. It often includes the intersection of power, trust, and harmful actions. In the religious organization itself, leaders (priests, bishops, ministers, clergy, etc.) may take advantage of the power of their positions and the trust given them by members of the church. This can fuel actions that manipulate, abuse, or harm. This harm may take the form of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, and can have a very profound and enduring impact on the people who experience it. Furthermore, the stigma associated with abuse and mental health issues in many religious communities can create additional barriers to seeking help and support.
Religious abuse can also occur in the home, where family members may be subjected to emotional, psychological, or physical abuse in the name of staying faithful to the tenets of the religion. Justification of these behaviors may be connected to beliefs that both the abuser and victim hold dear, adding an additional layer of confusing and complex harm on top of the damage already done. Obviously this type of abuse is also likely to cause significant and lasting emotional distress and may constitute religious trauma.
Understanding the Difference Between Trauma and Adverse Experiences
Adverse experiences (or, just the really bad stuff that can happen to people) and trauma are related but distinct in some important ways. They both involve significant and acute stress that can potentially have a harmful impact on an individual’s mental health and well-being. However, it helps to think of trauma more as a potential outcome of an adverse experience or set of experiences, less as the experiences themselves–though they are often used interchangeably, which can lead to confusion. And not all experiences that could be described as ‘traumatic’ actually lead to the development of trauma symptoms. In fact, only an estimated 8% of individuals who experience something traumatic will develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
It is also worth noting that although trauma and adverse experiences can have a negative impact on mental health, they can also lead to post-traumatic growth. Which brings us to a discussion of why therapy can help, whether your harmful experiences with religion are classified as trauma, abuse, or highly impactful adverse experiences.
How Therapy Can Help with Religious Trauma
Psychotherapy can be an effective way to address religious trauma and its impact on mental health. Treatment would consist of many of the same underlying ingredients of an approach to healing from any kind of trauma, with the added elements of understanding how a belief system and its doctrines intersect not only with the nature of those harmful experiences but also quite often with the client’s own identity and beliefs at the time.
In addition to this complicated issue, there are also other unique challenges in the treatment of religious trauma. Facing the idea that people, institutions, and doctrines once deeply trusted to provide safety could also cause such harmful damage is not only highly confusing, but also often evokes a deep sense of loss and grief. Or at times it causes a victim of trauma or abuse to experience incredibly overwhelming guilt and shame, emotions that turn inward and blame the self. Sometimes people are told that their problems are because they don’t have enough faith, or that the solution to their complex problems is simply to engage more actively in religious practices.
These and other obstacles can make it very difficult for people to seek help and support, whether from therapy or even the family and friends around them, as they may feel conflicted, confused, or embarrassed to admit the extent of their suffering. Additionally, the stigma often associated with mental health issues in many religious communities can act as a barrier to treatment.
Therapists who work frequently with and understand the complexities of religious trauma will work hard to establish a safe, non-judgmental, and open environment, with particular sensitivity to not repeating the same harmful power dynamics that were often part of the original trauma. They will understand and help explore more fully the emotions that often arise, whether those be confusion, guilt, anger, grief, fear, or some combination of all of those. And they will do so with a respect for the individual’s ability to autonomously decide their own beliefs or lack thereof, without trying to persuade them in any particular religious or spiritual direction but instead focusing on ensuring the restoration of psychological health first and foremost.
The professionals at Full Color Psychology are all very experienced with issues relating to religious trauma, faith crises, and faith transitions. If you’d like to explore questions or concerns you have about any of these areas or if you want to get started working on healing from religious trauma, email any of us today and we’ll help you explore some options.
