Religious or Spiritual Trauma

Religious and spiritual trauma is the result of individuals being forced, coerced, or committed to high-control and high-demand belief systems, usually in churches, residential schools, and other faith-based institutions. This experience causes trauma through controlling, manipulating, and forcing people to adopt beliefs without question in the name of faith. In Canada, colonization is an example of religious and spiritual trauma that has caused great harm to many people, even generations after the offences took place.

Often in cases of religious and spiritual trauma, any beliefs, practices, and perspectives that don’t align with the church, school, or religion are rejected. Instead, concepts like sin, hell, suffering, evil, God, and a belief that everyone must be heterosexual are used as weapons of fear to oppress people and enforce submission. People experiencing religious or spiritual trauma may have internalized these beliefs and values, which can deeply compromise and threaten their sense of self, how they think about and interact with others, the purpose of life, or even what is morally right or wrong. As a result, the nervous system is always under perceived threats.

Symptoms & signs of religious or spiritual trauma

If you’ve experienced religious or spiritual trauma, it’s probable that the systems of belief you’ve been exposed to have promoted dividing all thoughts and behaviours into good and evil, and as a result skewed your understanding of well-being, health, love, pleasure, culture, etc. You may experience (or may have experienced):

• Dissociation (feeling disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, and memories)
• Nightmares or flashbacks
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Hypervigilance (always being on the lookout for threats and potential threats)
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Persistent guilt and/or shame
• Suicidal thoughts
• Self-esteem issues
• Grief and loss
• Inhibited healthy emotional, psychological, social, and sexual development
• Feeling indebted to a community
• Struggle with creating healthy boundaries with others
• Subjected to gaslighting  (questioning your own reality and accuracy of your memories)
• Victim-blaming
• Homophobia
• Racism and other forms of discrimination
• Isolation
• Sexual and intimacy issues, such as vaginismus
• Sanctified suffering (the more you suffer, the “holier” God makes you)
• Spiritual bypassing (using spiritual beliefs to avoid confronting or resolving other emotional or mental issues)
• Emotional, physical, psychological and sexual abuse and manipulation.
• Those who are working on separating themselves from harmful theology may feel codependent and experience loss of connection with others and grief.