Religious and Spiritual Trauma and Recovery

Religious and spiritual trauma in people's lives is sometimes very difficult to identify. Typically, religion can offer people hope and moral guidelines by which they can try to model their life after and do good in the world around them. This is a good thing about religion, except that the experience of what hope is offered and how moral guidelines get interpreted through every person's influence is different, and is guided by their own life experiences and biases. What happens is that people become reliant on the voices in whichever religious community they surround themselves with, and abusive control and dominance in authority figures (overt or covert) causes harm to people on the receiving end of it. People who have been on the receiving end of religious harm or trauma may not recognize it until the effects of it begin to show through. 

People choose religion in their life for many reasons. Some are born into it and exist within that framework until they are challenged in their life to have to clarify their beliefs within themselves and either re-adopt the same thinking or make changes to it based on the new eyes they have at that time. Others choose it at some point of their life because they are introduced to the line of thinking of a particular religion that resonates with them, or circumstances in their life lead them to search for a community of people that think like they do or they want to learn to think like.

Religion does not always equal control. There are religious communities that are not setup to funnel people's thinking and actions, and/or step in to re-direct or enact consequences (sometimes punishment); however, religious communities that do operate in this method have created strong religious control over the people in the community. This is where abuse of power and the trauma that comes from the religious control creates webs of deception and the biases of people become involved, often from the top down. 

Religious control can look like so many things in a person's life (for discussions regarding a wider look at control in general, and its effects inwardly and outwardly in a person's life, click here), but this page is about religious and spiritual control specifically, with emphasis on the people in a person's life representing The Church, and its role in a person's life.

If you, or someone you know has experienced religious trauma (cult-like thinking) and would like help and/or support in and with it, contact us for some specialized recommendations.

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