Religious trauma/abuse/cult recovery
It’s really hard to walk away from a religious/spiritual group when you realize it’s unhealthy and potentially hurting you.
I would know having survived a cult before.
I was in college at the time. I had been raised in a wonderful family, not without flaws, but the best one I could have asked for. Suddenly, I was in a group that tried to pry me from them, claiming they weren’t religious enough for this group I was a part of.
I was navigating being on my own as a young adult for the first time in my life. I had no idea of some of the ways of the world yet. On top of that, I had yet to be diagnosed with ADHD and Autism, both of which, I’ve since learned, often can increase a person’s susceptibility to getting trapped in cults. I liked knowing the ways I was supposed to behave as I’d always struggled with making friends before. These people seemed to really like me and seemed to accept me. It was also very clear what I needed to do to continue to be liked and accepted. The rest was history from there. Every day became a slippery slope into further entrapment of a very young, vulnerable person.
I’ll never forget the day I decided to leave. I had managed to spend time with my family over the holidays after a very serious and extremely abusive situation in my religious group. My mother canceled my flight back and I drove back with my father and brother, armed with trash bags and duffels to unceremoniously pack my belongings and run. It wasn’t pretty and I was under threat of being detained the entire time and ended up being publicly excommunicated.
It was in this state of full blown PTSD that I began my graduate school education as a therapist. What a wild ride.
Trauma from harmful religious/spiritual experiences are a lot like any other trauma you might find yourself experiencing. Trauma is extreme stress in a situation where you feel unsafe. It doesn’t matter if it’s emotional or physical or both. Where religious/spiritual trauma differs from regular trauma is that it’s usually coming from people you thought were safe, shared your beliefs and values, and were your close community. It’s an incredibly deep betrayal that can result in very severe loneliness and isolation and, worst of all, deep shame.
The human brain/body cannot tell the difference between psychological threats or physical threats. It logs both experiences as physical threats just to be safe. Your brain/body would rather err on the side of being too cautious and protective for your physical safety that maybe get it wrong by saying “oh, it’s just psychological stress” and oops now you’re dead or seriously injured!
This is what makes religious/spiritual trauma so difficult. A lot of the time, it’s chronic psychological danger which can also be layered on top of physical danger. Ask me how I know.
The thing that religious/spiritual trauma is oftentimes threatening is your sense of belonging which is actually very important from a biological as well as psychological stand point. We aren’t meant to be in isolation, so community can feel like a point of primal survival.
As advanced and awesome as we are, there are some old habits written into our human coding that die super hard.
No matter what you’ve been through, you’re not alone and you can find healing.
I’m not going to judge you. I remember how afraid I felt when I left. It’s taken me some time to be able to talk about my experiences so freely and to heal.
I cannot promise you the same healing experiences that I’ve had. That would be weird and missing the point.
What I can promise you is that I will listen. Compassion. Patience (becuase it’s okay if this takes a while). Understanding. Open mindedness.
I can promise you therapeutic skills to actually help you begin to make sense of everything that’s happened and help you move forward in a way that makes the most sense for you. You might have already read on my homepage that I specialize first and foremost in Psychodynamic Counseling.
This is what I will use for the majority of our work. This allows us to go at your pace and take our time understanding everything that has happened and what you need right now and moving forward. It’s a very good modality that has a lot of flexibility when beginning to tease apart the tangles of such a horrifying and truly saddening experience.
It also allows you time to build trust with me as your counselor/therapist (use whichever word works best for you). Religious/spiritual trauma often impacts our ability to trust others and I want to validate that this can take time to open up about again.
It doesn’t matter what denomination you’ve come from. A cult is a cult. Religious abuse is religious abuse. Pain is pain. What I can promise you is that we’ll figure this out together and make the space you need to recover from what’s happened.
Give me a call so we can get started and help you put more of this puzzle together.