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Religion is a shared experience across virtually all cultures, countries, and ethnicities, with about 85 percent of the world’s population identifying with a religion. At its best, religion can help people build vital social connections, provide a sense of structure, and promote self-improvement, empathy, and learning. At its worst, it can be weaponized and used to suppress personal freedom and control followers. In some cases, people may come away from their religious communities scarred and disillusioned from physical, emotional, or sexual abuse or financial exploitation.
Making the decision to leave a faith community can be heart-wrenching. In extreme circumstances, cutting off ties to a religious community means losing close friendships and relationships with family members. If the person’s faith community discourages social connections with friends and family members outside the community, the individual may lose their entire social support system. In these cases, religious trauma can have a lasting impact on how the individual functions, connects with others and navigates their religious beliefs.
What Is Religious Trauma?
Religious trauma occurs when a person’s religious community is a source of stress and becomes degrading, abusive, and damaging. Because people’s faith-based beliefs and experiences are generally very important to them, this type of trauma can be harmful to their physical and mental health.
Religious trauma generally consists of several stages. First, the individual experiences the trauma. This may be a one-time event, such as an incident of public shaming or sexual assault, or it may be related to ongoing teachings, expectations, or forced isolation. For example, someone living in an abusive marriage may be urged to stay in an unsafe situation and to work harder on their marriage rather than seeking separation or divorce. Followers may be discouraged from maintaining relationships with those outside their faith community, or they may have to comply with rigid guidelines and expectations.
Second, those within the community see the traumas through the lens of their belief system. To someone outside the religious community, these behaviors and patterns are abusive and unhealthy. However, those on the inside may comply with their faith community’s expectations for fear that their eternal soul is at stake. Followers are expected to conform to rigid guidelines or else face intimidation tactics, public shaming, humiliation, and threats of serious spiritual consequences if they don’t conform.
Third, individuals may be retraumatized when religious leaders downplay or outright deny instances of abuse or reinforce the idea that the abuse was beneficial. If the individual attempts to address an incident or teaching, the religious community may claim that it was justified and decreed by God, and the individual’s inability to accept it as good is evidence of their shortcomings. Fear of public shaming or being forced out of the community may result in someone silently living with the trauma.
In some cases, religious trauma arises when someone leaves an unhealthy faith community. This can be unsteadying for someone who’s used to having their worldview, beliefs, and actions controlled by their community, and it can result in strained or even estranged relationships. They may also experience a sense of fear as they begin to deconstruct their beliefs.
What Is Religious Trauma Syndrome?
Religious trauma syndrome isn’t listed in the most current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and isn’t an official diagnosis, but it’s something that many mental health practitioners take seriously. The phrase typically refers to the feelings of condemnation, shame, and guilt that may follow a person when they break away from a toxic religious community.
In most cases, the individual’s religious community is made up of others who feel passionately that their spiritual beliefs are the only correct path, even excluding others within their religion with less extreme beliefs. They often intentionally separate from the rest of the world and have a strong “us versus them” mentality. Leaders often discourage followers from sending children to public schools, working for secular employers, enjoying mainstream television shows, music, and books, acknowledging some or all holidays, and maintaining relationships with friends and family outside their religious circle. Their religious beliefs may govern everything from the clothes they wear to the food they eat, and they may be expected to attend numerous weekly religious events and meetings, often at the expense of their work-family responsibilities or mental health.
While this type of lifestyle and control may be unthinkable to those on the outside, any alternative may seem dangerous for those within authoritarian religious communities. The social bonds that form within these communities are typically very strong, and followers are conditioned to believe that leaving the community could have devastating spiritual effects on their lives and the lives of their families.
Despite this conditioning, many people can break away from toxic religious communities. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that the damage disappears overnight. Feelings of fear, self-doubt, and guilt can follow them for years, and they may have to build an entirely new social support system from the ground up. They may no longer feel welcome among those still in the religious community, which likely made up their entire support structure, but they may have difficulty connecting with anyone else. Many people deal with the aftermath of leaving an unhealthy religious environment for years or even decades.
What Are Some Signs of Religious Trauma Syndrome?
Every situation is unique, and factors such as how long the individual was in a toxic religious community, whether they were a follower or a leader within their community, and whether they have any social connections on the “outside” can have a profound impact on how religious trauma affects them. Even so, there are some common symptoms shared by many with RTS. These include:
- Loneliness
- Grief for lost relationships, sense of purpose, or religious security
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Sleep disruptions
- A sense of not belonging or fitting in
- Difficulty with making decisions
- Difficulty with critical thinking
- Eating disorders
- Difficulty establishing boundaries
- Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
How to Heal from Religious Trauma
Religious trauma can feel very isolating. For many people, there’s a sense of shame or embarrassment that they were ever in a controlling and toxic religious community. At the same time, there’s a lot of fear associated with leaving. While they may reject the extremism of their previous beliefs or separate themselves from religion altogether, their conditioning may make it difficult to openly criticize the community that was once so important to them. For that reason, it may be very difficult for some to get the help they need to overcome religious trauma.
Fortunately, several therapies are helpful for those with PTSD from religions. These may include:
Mental health practitioners can also help individuals treat mental illnesses that stem from or contribute to religious trauma, including depression and anxiety. Other mindfulness strategies such as meditation, self-care, and journaling can be helpful for those navigating the feelings that come with leaving a toxic religious community.
Knowing where to turn for help in dealing with religious trauma can be difficult. At FHE, we develop customized treatment plans to help individuals take charge of their mental health, regain a sense of purpose and belonging, and reframe their religious experiences. To learn more, contact us today.
