Emotional Responses To Religious Trauma

(It’s Okay If Gratitude Is Not One Of Them!)

Grief With A Side Of Anxiety And Guilt…

Well, here we are already halfway through November – how on earth did that happen??  Temps are dropping, daylight savings has ended, the time for embracing darkness and hygge has begun, some of you may have already experienced the first snow of the season (thankfully not here in San Diego!)…

Many of us are preparing to gather next week for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Whether with friends or with family, the common directive during the month of November is to be thankful…thankful for what you have, thankful for what you don’t have, thankful for what you’ve been through, thankful for family, friends, communities, etc.

During this season, it can feel like you are supposed to be grateful for everything, perhaps even major sources of distress or pain.  In religious communities, someone having an “attitude of gratitude” in the midst of terrible life circumstances is often praised and seen as being faithful to God’s word (i.e. “…give thanks in all circumstances…”).

But what happens when the things you have experienced have been so catastrophically painful and destructive that no amount of mental gymnastics will get you feeling grateful for it?  What happens when the spiritual abuse or religious trauma you experienced derailed your life and you have struggled to get back on track (or to build a new set of tracks)? What happens when the people who are telling you to “just be thankful” are part of the very system that caused you so much harm?

Don’t get me wrong – intentionally practicing gratitude is not inherently bad or wrong, and can at times be a helpful mental health practice.  But when thankfulness is the only option and there is no room for anything else, things can start to go downhill fast.  For those of you who have survived spiritual abuse and religious trauma, and/or have deconstructed and/or exited religion, you are going to have feelings about it.  Lots of them.  And probably most of them aren’t going to be gratitude.  And that is 100% okay and normal.

So, you are left with a choice:  1) ignore all those distressing feelings inside in order to appear grateful on the outside, or 2) acknowledge and be present to the full range of emotions that you are experiencing (i.e. honor your humanity) about your religious trauma, even if that means throwing the spirit of gratitude out the window this year.  

Here’s why emotions are so important…Psychologist Diana Fosha described feelings as “the experiential arc between the problem and the solution.”  Meaning, when we allow ourselves to feel the emotion and ride out the wave in a sense, we will likely gain clarity on what we need and what we need to do.  When we don’t allow ourselves that process, solutions and our needs might seem cloudy or out of reach because we are blocking the very thing that would get us there (feeling the feeling).

Common Emotional Responses to Religious Trauma…

I invite you to get curious and courageous about what feelings lie within related to your religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and faith deconstruction.  Below are some common responses that I’ve come across, both personally and professionally in my work with clients.  Remember, your feelings are valid, even if everyone around you is giving thanks right now.

Grief:  Religious trauma survivors often feel grief on many levels – grief about the friendships they have lost; grief about the second family they lost; grief about the years of their life they won’t get back; grief about losing a belief system and worldview, etc.  There is no way around it – religious trauma and faith deconstruction are often experienced like a death…a tremendous loss that must be grieved.

Guilt:  Some common refrains I hear from religious trauma survivors are “I should have known better” or “I should have realized sooner how harmful this was and gotten out sooner” or “I feel so guilty that I raised my kids in this religion and they experienced harm from it, too.”  In many religious communities, especially those that preach the doctrine of original sin, feeling guilty is a knee jerk reaction because we are indoctrinated to think that we are fundamentally bad.  If anything goes wrong we are taught to believe that it’s our fault and that we are responsible.  A recipe for self-blame and judgment even when it’s not our fault?  You bet!  

Anxiety:  It is terrifying to have holes poked in your world view and belief system and then watch it all come crashing down.  “Is my church community talking about me and my questions/doubts?  Am I going to hell for leaving the church?  Will my church friends still talk to me even if I don’t believe the same things they do anymore?  Is there a hell?  Is there a God?  Am I going to hell for being gay?  Can I be gay and Christian?  I don’t even know what the fuck I believe anymore.  Well now I’m probably going to hell for swearing, so…”  Living with this level of worry and fear everyday activates the nervous system (and your symptoms of anxiety) and puts you on alert for threat or potential harm, bracing for impact against further injury.  

Anger:  When religious trauma survivors start waking up to the fact that they have been harmed, manipulated, pressured, silenced, or lied to, anger is a very normal emotional response.  Though it is not comfortable to feel angry, it is an important part of the healing process.  Often in high control religious systems, people are indoctrinated into believing that they are bad.  When that belief gets internalized, a natural conclusion, maybe not even in someone’s conscious awareness, is that they deserve to be punished.  So when bad things happen, when someone gets harmed, or when someone gets mistreated, manipulated, or abused, it might not be that big of a leap for them to feel like they deserved it.  But for someone to be angry about the injustices that have happened to them they need to be in touch with their self-worth, because at the core of feeling angry about being harmed is the belief “I deserved better than what I got.”

Loneliness:  I wrote a whole blog post dedicated to this one which you can read here.  But in a nutshell, when someone begins questioning the beliefs, theology, and values of the religious system they are a part of, their relationships within that system can start to suffer at a time when that person needs relational support the most.  When someone begins to question the system, to doubt the black and white messages and rules, and to listen to their inner voice that says “something about this isn’t working for me anymore”, distance, tension, and discord can surface in these relationships that once felt close, secure, and safe.

In Conclusion…

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but hopefully puts words to feelings you have felt in the past or are feeling in the present related to your religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and faith deconstruction.  If you are a survivor of religious trauma or spiritual abuse, or are deconstructing your faith, I give you permission to turn a deaf ear to the calls for gratitude this time of year, and to tune into your own internal experience of your own specific set of emotions.  Our feelings provide us with valuable data and information that we can use to find a way forward.  Therapy can be a great place to start tuning in and learning how to be present to what we feel.  I’d love to support you on that journey – reach out today for a free consultation.