Adverse Religious Experiences & Spiritual Trauma
We are not anti-religion.
We are anti-harm.
Adverse Religious Experiences are any experiences 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.
Are adverse religious experiences really traumatic?
First of all, religious trauma or spiritual trauma is trauma.
Having one or more adverse religious experiences (AREs) may lead to trauma. However, what one nervous system experiences as trauma is different than what another nervous system experiences as trauma. Trauma is defined not by the event itself but rather by the response that a person’s nervous system has in response to an event (or accumulation of events). A nervous system that experiences something as too much, too soon, that is overwhelmed and copes by engaging a threat response (fight, flight, fawn, freeze, etc.) is a nervous system that has experienced trauma.
What are adverse religious experiences?
Religious trauma is trauma that occurs due to adverse religious experiences or involvement in religious communities.
AREs may include:
Being told that “God” does not love or accept you.
Being told that you are innately inadequate or inherently bad/sinful.
Feeling guilty even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
Being taught to feel shameful about your identity or sexuality.
Being told that you are to blame when bad things happen.
Learning that you cannot trust your own instincts and emotions.
Feeling ashamed when you experienced bodily or sexual pleasure (especially if it occurs outside of a heterosexual marriage).
Treating other people in a way you now regret because of religious pressure.
Being passed over, singled out, or treated differently in a religious setting because of your race, gender, or social status.
Having “gone along with” or participated in religious activities or practices with which you did not agree or feel comfortable to avoid trouble or exclusion.
Having experienced abuse (verbal, sexual, physical, emotional, psychological, etc.) within a religious setting or which was ignored, mishandled, or caused by a religious authority figure or belief.
Being encouraged to re-enter a harmful, abusive, or dangerous situation after consulting with a pastor, Christian counselor, or other religious person.
Being exposed to or been part of a religious community where severe discord, a split, or a fracture has occurred.
Feeling pressured into donating time or money to a religious group.
Feeling responsible for the salvation of the people around you.
Being afraid to make friends outside of your religious group.
Fear of yourself or others going to hell.
This is not an exhaustive list. If you experienced any type of harm within a religious setting, it is an adverse religious experience.
“Religious trauma refers to the lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being after an Adverse Religious Experience has occurred”
Any type of trauma includes the following types of symptoms; in fact, the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), requires symptoms from the following four categories. However, not all experiences of trauma fit neatly into the diagnosis of PTSD, and PTSD is only one of many ways to conceptualize traumatic experiences.
Intrusive symptoms (such as ruminative thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, and obsessive thinking)
Some examples of how this may present in someone experiencing religious trauma include:
Ruminative thoughts of hell
Nightmares about a traumatic event or a Biblical story
Obsessions and compulsions related to a need to be perfect in order to earn god’s favor
Avoidance symptoms (such as avoiding reminders/triggers, distraction, dissociation, isolation, substance use, workaholism)
Some examples of how this may present in someone experiencing religious trauma include:
Avoiding religious communities or people that are triggering or make you feel anxious or angry
Using substances to distract from distressing feelings
Isolating from family and friends, and feeling as though if you leave your religious community, you will have no one to turn to
Changes in thoughts/feelings (such as difficulty remembering traumatic event(s), extreme negative beliefs, anxiety, depression, shame, self-blame, feeling detached from others or the world, difficulty or inability experiencing pleasure)
Some examples of how this may present in someone experiencing religious trauma include:
Negative beliefs or perceptions about “non-believers”
Black and white thinking
Feeling as though you are guilty even when you haven’t done anything wrong
Difficulty experiencing pleasure within sexual relationships
Changes in arousal (such as feeling on edge, difficulty focusing, insomnia, irritability, hyper vigilance, increased startle response, self-destructive behavior)
Religious and spiritual trauma is trauma.
Mental health symptoms that may be experienced as a result of religious trauma:
Shame about being personally responsible for Jesus’ death, being a sinner, or not living up to god’s expectations
Feelings of unworthiness, being unlovable, or being inherently bad or sinful or evil
Fear of rejection by god or religious community
Lack of self-compassion
Lack of personal autonomy (an ingrained belief that your life belongs to god, which can lead to challenges making decisions, creating personal boundaries, and providing intentional consent)
Lack of self-trust
Lack of trust of your own body, emotions, and intuition
Current or history of chronic fear or anxiety around salvation, the rapture, hell, satan, or demons; fearing that you or your loved ones will go to hell
Superstitious beliefs about what will lead to positive and negative outcomes in life
Perfectionism - fear of making mistakes
Black and white thinking - judging every individual thought or action as “good” or “bad”
Spiritual bypassing - denying the presence and validity of mental health issues due to a belief that those feelings come from satan or a lack of faith, and if one prays enough or are favored then god will take the mental health symptoms away
Difficulty experiencing pleasure
Feeling bad or wrong for having sexual thoughts or feelings, or having physical reactions to sexual situations such as crying or feeling a disconnection from one’s body
Feeling shame for your gender identity or sexuality (especially if it differs from the cisgender/heterosexual norms)
Feeling guilty when you haven’t done anything wrong
Blaming yourself when bad things happen to you
Feeling ashamed when you get angry
Feeling guilty for questioning those in positions of authority
Feeling guilty for not donating time or money to a religious group
Feeling an obligation to recruit people to a religious group (and feeling guilt when you don’t do this)
Feeling guilty for not attending the meetings/services of a religious group
Feeling responsible for the salvation of the people around you
Fearing advice or treatment from non-believers
Fear of enjoying media by non-believers
Fearing that doubts about your faith indicate that you’re not truly saved
Often assuming that religious people and leaders are judging you
Suspecting that religious leaders don’t want people to be happy or enjoy sex; that they don’t actually believe what they teach
Suspecting that god is cruel or indifferent to your suffering
I want to know more.
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Absolutely not! If you choose to engage in therapy to support your recovery from adverse religious experiences and/or religious trauma, YOU get to decide how to move forward with your relationship with faith, spirituality, and religion. I am not anti-religion or anti-church, but I am anti-harm, and my goal is to support you in engaging with spirituality and religion in a way that feels safe and supportive for you - sometimes that means staying in your current church, sometimes it means finding a new community, and sometimes it means leaving religion altogether. But the choice is entirely yours.
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Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Both types of trauma lead to trauma responses in your body (learn more about trauma here). However, I do believe they are distinct, and here is how I differentiate them:
Religious trauma is trauma that has occurred in a religious setting or at the hands of religious leaders.
On the other hand, ALL trauma is spiritual trauma because all trauma impacts our sense of self and the way we make meaning of the world. Spiritual trauma is more directly related to experiences that impact your relationship with the divine, your self, and your sense of purpose and meaning.
All this being said - you can use whatever language feels right for you based on your own experiences.
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According to Dr. Bob Kellerman, “Biblical Counseling is Christ-centered, church-based, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed one-another ministry that depends upon the Holy Spirit to relate God’s Word to suffering and sin by speaking and living God’s truth in love to equip people to love God and one another. It cultivates conformity to Christ and communion with Christ and the Body of Christ leading to a community of one-another disciple-makers.”
This is not therapy; it is proselytizing.
Psychotherapy with a licensed professional is a form of treatment aimed at relieving emotional distress and mental health problems.
Psychotherapy can be practiced in a wide variety of ways, many of which are indeed evidenced based (meaning, research has been done to validate that these treatments work in the way they say they do); and it is always done by a licensed professional who is accredited.
Psychotherapy is different from biblical counseling in that the therapist is not aimed at imparting a particular worldview on a client (a worldview which teaches that people are born sinful and the only way to healing and emotional relief is by obeying god). Therapists can support you in your religious journey or spiritual exploration, however, they should never tell you what to believe or impose a particular religious worldview on you.
Biblical counseling is harmful because it is not trauma-informed. High-control religions (often the places where biblical counseling is encouraged and available) are often a source of adverse and/or traumatic experiences. Biblical counseling does not make space for the way that high-control religions can be harmful. In fact, in can often contribute to the harm.
I’m a religious trauma survivor, too.
I grew up in fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity. And I found my way to a safer, more supportive version of faith and spirituality.
You can too.
