Are You Feeling Lost and Confused After Changing Beliefs or Leaving Religion?
7 Signs* You’ve Experienced Religious Trauma or Spiritual Harm:
You were taught you’re a bad person, you will be damned or are going to hell because you no longer go to church.
You experience crippling anxiety because it feels like everything you were taught was a lie and you don’t know what to believe.
You feel depressed because you don’t know the meaning of life anymore.
Shame is a constant in your life. You frequently are reminded of scripture or messages that told you you’re bad/not good enough.
You don’t feel safe outside of the religious community but also can’t go back and try to fit in anymore.
You were taught that your sexuality or gender is not worthy/inherently wrong.
You feel constant religious guilt.
*This is by no means an all inclusive list of symptoms of religious trauma/harm. Just a starting place.
Religious Trauma is Real
In the United States, religion (and especially subsects of christianity) is ubiquitous. People often don’t realize that there can be trauma arising from a culture of harmful experiences. Even therapists sometimes recommend church or religious practices because of the lack of understanding of these forms of trauma.
Adverse Religious Experiences is defined as any experience of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual's sense of safety or autonomy and/or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well- being. These experiences can result in trauma to that person.
Adverse Religious Experiences can include:
Loss of autonomy: shutting down individual thought, being taught to distrust one’s self, banning critical thinking, deferring decision making to the spiritual authority
Spiritual Abuse: Being required to submit to spiritual authorities, no accountability for clergy, use of holy text to oppress or abuse, threatening consequences for breaking group rules/”sinning”
Isolation: Cutting off people outside of the religious system, information control, devaluing people outside the religious system, oversight of members’ time/money
Sexuality & Gender Defining Adverse Consequences: Defining rigid gender rules, inherent “sinfulness” of specific sexual expressions, belief in one gender being greater, patriarchal values, requirements of “purity”, policing sexual expressions, declaring individuals who are acting different from prescribed gender roles as sinful
And much more.
These adverse religious experiences can result in trauma to the brain, body, and deeper sense of self. This can look like overwhelming self-doubt, confusion, constant fear and shame, fears of people and places outside the religious system, depression, anxiety. It can cause self-medicating with substances, dissociation and disconnection from the body, a freeze response, lack of purpose and a felt sense that life is meaningless, hopelessness, distrust in self, distrust in others, and more.
Religious Trauma Therapy Can Help You Return To Yourself
Imagine that you wake up and feel peaceful. Shame and fear are no longer running your life. Depression and anxiety don’t define you. You are your own person.
Counseling can help this be your reality. In therapy you can receive tools for helping the body process distress and access your own ability to heal. You’ve done the brave hard thing of surviving all this and now you get to have the support you deserve.
I personally know it’s possible to heal because I (Sarah Kate Wilder) have been there. Check out my story: the exposed version for more info. Additionally, over my 10 years of providing therapy, I’ve witnessed many people heal their past and create the life they truly want.
Every person’s experience with religious trauma is different. I will tailor the process to what makes sense for you and your goals. I often use a mix of body-based practices to support healing as well as processing the thoughts/beliefs to repair the distrust and return to yourself.
I believe you have the power to heal from the experiences that led you to believe you are unworthy or unlovable. Even though it doesn’t often feel like it, facing the harm is incredibly brave. You deserve the support of a knowledgeable therapist to help you return to yourself and your inherent worthiness.
I’m considering counseling for religious trauma, but I still have some questions and concerns…
I AM QUESTIONING MY RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING BUT I HAVEN’T LEFT THE COMMUNITY AND I MAY STILL AGREE WITH SOME OF IT. WILL MY THERAPIST HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS?
Absolutely not! A pivotal part of exploring traumatic events is for the therapist to hold space for nuance and what matters to each person they are working with. I am invested in empowering you to find your own answers to your questions.
The intention is to support you to create the relationship with faith, beliefs, non-beliefs, religious community, community outside of religion etc. that you want while helping you heal from distressing messages and experiences.
I DON’T HAVE SPECIFIC DISTRESSING MEMORIES IN THE FAITH COMMUNITY, CAN COUNSELING STILL HELP?
Yes, definitely!
Counseling can help with the instinctual body responses that may be linked to trauma messages like “I don’t matter”, “I am a bad person” and “I’m not enough”. These often show up as body sensations and feelings instead of specific memories. There are multiple counseling methods that support working through these thoughts and feelings.
DOES THIS MEAN THAT I’LL NEED TO BE IN THERAPY FOREVER?
Therapy is not a lifetime commitment. Your therapist can support you with tools and resources to empower you outside of the session to improve your mental health and wellness. This can be a more brief approach to therapy.
Or if you’re looking to do deeper work in processing religious trauma, your therapist will tailor the approach to those intentions. Using effective trauma techniques, clients can have improvements in even 2-8 sessions of trauma specialized therapy sessions (see EMDR Therapy specialty)
Some clients do brief therapy. Some start, make progress and pause then come back as needed. Some do continued therapy over the course of a longer period of time. What matters most is that you get the support you are looking for whether it be short term or long term. You get to decide what fits for you.
I DON’T THINK I HAVE A “TRAUMA” BUT SOME OF THIS RESONATES WITH ME AND I THINK THE PAST MESSAGES MAY BE AFFECTING ME TODAY.
Increasing your awareness of how your past affects your present is helpful even if trauma isn’t a word that fits for you. From attachment research, which essentially is the study of how we relate to ourselves, others, and communities, we have learned that we tend to repeat patterns. But with reflection, we can bring awareness to this which allows us to have choices.
We can choose what we want to continue from our past and what we want to change. So it is totally okay that you don’t resonate with the word trauma. Therapy can still help you to have more choices, freedom, happiness in relationships and self confidence.
I WANT HELP BUT I CAN’T COME SEE YOU IN PERSON
No problem! This practice is entirely virtual using secure video. I am licensed in the states of Colorado, Florida and Idaho. I can work with anyone located in these states.
You Don’t Have To Go Through This Alone
If you’re struggling to recover after religious trauma, spiritual harm or leaving your faith community, help is available. Click below to set up your complimentary phone consultation to see if Sarah Kate is the right therapist for you.