Symptoms of Religious Trauma

Religious trauma has gotten a lot of press in recent years. Authors, philosophers, and clergy members have been thinking about this phenomenon for centuries though. While there still isn’t a formal diagnosis for religious trauma, many attempts have been made to describe and measure the symptoms associated with this specific kind of trauma.

Below is my personal take on the symptoms of religious trauma. Keep in mind, not every religious trauma survivor experiences all of these symptoms. Be curious as you read this and take note of the things that resonate with you. Therapy with a licensed trauma therapist would likely be very healing.

Trauma Responses

Our bodies give us a lot of important information about what we’re experiencing, what we’ve been through, and what we need to survive. Paying attention to our physical and emotional sensations is essential if we hope to function in the world effectively. Our survival relies on our ability to tune into the body’s signals that let us know when we’re tired, happy, afraid, hungry, angry, hurt, etc.

Whenever we sense danger, our nervous systems automatically set off little alarm signals to let us know that we’re not safe. This internal alarm prompts a stress response that's known as the “Fight-or-Flight” response. These threat responses come in very handy when there’s danger. Without needing to stop and think, our bodies automatically jump into action to protect us. 

As research on stress responses has grown, we’ve come to recognize at least two additional responses: Freeze and Fawn. Let's explore each one briefly.

• The Fight Response helps you deal with the danger head-on by attacking the threat (verbally or physically) before it hurts you. In non-physical forms, fight responses can look like blaming, insulting, threatening, or shaming someone who seems threatening.

• The Flight Response helps you get away from the threat as fast as possible by running away physically, mentally, or emotionally. Less overt forms of the flight response are avoidance, procrastination, overworking, and distraction.

• The Freeze Response is like "playing dead" or avoiding detection by staying still and quiet until the threat passes. Freeze responses include feeling overwhelmed and unable to move, think, or speak clearly. A freeze response can sometimes override other options even if we'd prefer to fight, flee, or fawn.

• The Fawn Response is a strategy of trying to placate or appease the threat in order to earn temporary safety. Some common forms of fawning include extreme hospitality, people-pleasing, flattering, apologizing, etc.

Most people can experience threat responses in healthy and adaptive ways. When someone has PTSD, however, they perceive that threats are happening all around them all the time. This traps their nervous system in a miserable cycle of triggers and threat responses. When someone spends a long period of time in an unsafe environment, it gets harder and harder for them to respond appropriately to the threat.

When the body experiences trauma, the nervous system goes into overdrive to protect us from danger. You can think of PTSD as a nervous system that's stuck in “survival mode” even after the threat has ended. These are the common symptoms associated with PTSD:

• Hypervigilance: a state of anxiety and tension due to compulsively monitoring for danger or any potential threats.
• Exaggerated Startle Response: intense physical reactions to unexpected stimuli or changes in one's environment.
• Flashbacks: an involuntary reliving of a traumatic experience, often including the connected emotional or physical responses.
• Avoidance: repeated efforts to reduce exposure to reminders of the traumatic experience.
• Social Withdrawal: increased isolation and difficulty connecting with social supports.
• Depression: hopelessness, irritability, excessive guilt, or shame (a negative view of one's own worth).
• Sleep Disturbance: difficulty falling or staying asleep (insomnia), nightmares, or night terrors.
• Dissociation: mental or emotional detachment or disconnection from one's current circumstances.
• Self-Harm or Neglect: intentional or unintentional acts that increase one's risk of injury or deterioration.

"The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” – Bessell Van Der Kolk

Reframing a Trauma Narrative

Any story comes with implied meanings, morals, or lessons. For example, the obvious lesson of the story about the boy who cried wolf is that people won’t believe someone who makes too many false cries for help. Trauma narratives are simply the stories that we repeat to ourselves about our traumatic past experiences and why they happened. Trauma narratives usually contain deeper messages too.

In the wake of a traumatic event, we all automatically make unconscious interpretations about why it happened to us and what “lesson” we learned from it. Unfortunately, trauma narratives that are born in fear, hurt, and blame are rarely helpful or even accurate.

When we’ve retold and reinforced our trauma narrative for long enough, it’s easy to accept it as the truth, even if it’s completely inaccurate or illogical. When we base our thoughts and choices on the distorted “lessons” of our trauma narrative, dysfunction, confusion, and powerlessness start stacking up.

An essential part of trauma recovery is investigating and challenging the harmful interpretations we took with us after our traumatic experience. Otherwise, an unexamined trauma narrative will keep reinforcing harmful beliefs and misplaced blame. Below are three main steps for identifying, challenging, and reframing a trauma narrative.

Step 1: Identify the Trauma Narrative

Identifying your negative trauma narrative is like cleaning out an infected wound to finally get rid of the stubborn infection. The first step is to reflect on the old narrative you’ve been telling yourself and investigate the unconscious “lessons” you’ve been believing.

Below is a list of common beliefs that trauma survivors internalize due to their trauma narrative. Take note of any statements that reflect your own feelings about what you experienced. If none of the statements in the inventory seem to fit, is there another negative belief that seems to represent your trauma narrative better?

• My experience doesn’t count as trauma; it could have been much worse.
• Other people will assume that I think my trauma is worse than theirs.
• I must have done something to deserve what happened to me.
• The person/people who hurt me had good reasons or good intentions.
• The person/people who hurt me couldn’t control their actions.
• The person/people who hurt me had a reason for picking me out.
• I should expect everyone in my life to treat me the same way in the future.
• My experience proves something shameful about me.
• It’s immature that I’m still upset about what happened to me.
• The physical and emotional reactions I’ve had are irrational.
• If I were stronger this wouldn’t have impacted me so much.
• If I were stronger it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
• Pretending that It didn’t happen is proof that I’ve moved on.
• Calling it trauma would be admitting that I’m permanently broken.
• There’s nothing I can do about it now except try to forget.
• I’m not the only one it happened to so it must not be a big deal.
• If no one else remembers it happening, I must have made it up.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will blame me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they won’t believe me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will see me as broken.
• If I speak up about what happened it will ruin someone else’s life.
• My experience made me stronger so I should be grateful for it.

Step 2: Challenge the Trauma Narrative

Now that you’ve identified the “moral of the story” for your trauma narrative, it’s time to reassess it from a different perspective. It’s often helpful to imagine that a loved one of yours is telling you the story and you are hearing the details for the first time. Instead of taking your old interpretations for granted, examine and question them. Negative core beliefs need to be debunked before you can look at your story in a new light.

Things to be on the lookout for include:

• Automatic feelings of shame or self-blame
• Outdated assumptions that you no longer believe are true
• Thinking errors (negative interpretations) that are common for you
• Placing unfair blame or responsibility on yourself
• Unrealistic expectations of your past self
• Mind reading what other’s thoughts or intentions were
• Jumping to conclusions about what it all means

If you notice any inaccurate or unrealistic interpretations, write them down and imagine how you would respond to a loved one if they said those things. Gently address each problematic interpretation with the same amount of grace you would offer your loved one. Even if you’re not sure you really believe it yet, start practicing reminding yourself of the alternative perspective.

Step 3: Practice the New Narrative

With practice, telling yourself a more empathetic and validating version of your trauma narrative can lead to incredible relief. It won’t erase the reality of what happened, but it WILL clear out the unnecessary clutter of shame, blame, and self-hate that often accompany our trauma narratives.

This reframing takes time and practice, though. You won’t be perfect at it immediately but don’t give up. Every time you’re reminded of the old, self-defeating trauma narrative, you have an opportunity to practice. Try taking a deep breath and intentionally repeating the new story from your new perspective.

Replacing old blame-based beliefs with empathy-based beliefs makes it much easier to accept and love ourselves. Any shame about our past reactions and choices will be much easier to understand and forgive. Once you’ve reframed and practiced your new trauma narrative, it should feel much more natural to care for and be kind to yourself.

The Shame Cycle + Religious Trauma

I've worked with therapy clients for long enough to know the telltale cycle that toxic shame turns into. It is the most common reason why people come to therapy, period; and that's especially true for people with religious trauma, even if they don’t know it yet. So what is the shame cycle and what does it have to do with religion?

In normal circumstances, the shame cycle can easily go unnoticed as it slowly demoralizes us. It's even more insidious, however, when a high-control religious group teaches us that it's the way we're supposed to feel. A simple self-defeating pattern gets elevated as the ideal way of living.

At the heart of the matter, people with toxic shame operate off the assumption that their problematic behaviors are a direct representation of who they are. In other words, they conflate their core identity with their external behaviors. This flawed way of thinking inevitably leads to the false conclusion that if we make a “bad” choice, it means that we are bad. 

Unfortunately, many high-control religious groups have inadvertently magnified the harmful impacts of toxic shame and are only now beginning to grapple with the implications. Today we're dealing with the fallout of an entire generation that was raised to believe they are inadequate, unloveable, and powerless to change. As a result, they're plagued by unrealistic expectations, poor personal boundaries, and emotional self-neglect.

Sound familiar? Let's break down the shame cycle step by step:

Shaming Worldview. Something in our upbringing planted the belief that we're not good enough. We try to avoid embarrassment by giving ourselves little shame-based pep talks about how worthless, selfish, or unlovable we are. In high-control religious groups, this can masquerade behind ideas like a "sinful nature" that is disgusting to God.

Imperfection. Since we’re human beings, we inevitably make mistakes or don’t achieve our goals. Our shame-based self-talk takes these opportunities to exaggerate our imperfections, making them doubly humiliating. In high-control religious settings, many are encouraged to confess their "sins" publicly to prove their remorse.

Misinterpretation. We make false interpretations of what our mistakes say about us, allowing them to define our capability, character, or worthiness. High-control religious groups often have a knack for little catchphrases that remind us how we've fallen short, deserve condemnation, and should avoid pride at all costs.

Perfectionism. To stave off self-hatred and the horror of rejection, we decide to prove our worthiness by working harder. We try to achieve absolute perfection by never setting healthy boundaries and working ourselves into exhaustion. High-control religious groups often capitalize on the volunteer labor, monetary support, and sheer desperation to please that comes from this.

Confirmation. When our self-defeating perfectionism eventually backfires, we take it as confirmation that we’re inadequate and incapable. Instead of learning from our unrealistic expectations, we feel doomed. This is the queue for our high-control religious group to offer the one and only remedy: salvation that hinges on total obedience.

Misattribution. Now that we're in a habit of blaming all bad outcomes on ourselves, we need someone to give the credit to when things go well. We attribute all positive experiences to something or someone else, never allowing ourselves to celebrate success. High-control religious groups often use over-spiritualization to attribute all good things to God whether it makes sense or not.

Reinforcement. The shame cycle is now solidly in place, feeding and reinforcing itself each time it repeats. The moral of the story is always that we're not good enough and we don't deserve good things. In high-control religion, this makes us even more ingratiated and reliant on the group that claims to have rescued us.

If this sounds like your story, you're not alone. Even more importantly, you don't have to stay trapped. Healing from the damage of toxic shame, whether it was reinforced by religion or not, is absolutely possible! Don't let shame convince you that you're incapable of change.

- Anna

A Response to the Southern Baptist Convention Report

The investigation report on the Southern Baptist Convention's handling of sexual assault allegations was released this week. As a therapist who works primarily with religious trauma and sexual assault survivors, it was absolutely devastating to read. 

To make a horrifically long story short, leaders in the SBC were proven to have repeatedly ignored, blamed, discredited, and shamed victims of sexual violence who have made outcries over the past decades. They even had a list of known offenders who were still active in church leadership. The Guidepost report's conclusion is that the SBC's executive committee was more concerned with protecting the reputation of the SBC than they were with the actual crimes being committed and hidden. This has left untold numbers of victims invalidated and ostracized by their own religious leaders.

I'm heartbroken for a number of reasons but this doesn't just impact me professionally. It's personal. For over 18 years of my life, the Southern Baptist Convention was like my family. My parents were career missionaries, sent by the International Mission Board, an extension of the SBC, to bring the gospel to the people of the Philippines. For my whole childhood, every meal I ate and every house I lived in was paid for by donations from Southern Baptist churches. When we would visit the states every few years, my family made the rounds to dozens of Southern Baptist congregations asking for their continued generosity.

I wish I could say that I'm shocked to discover that the SBC's leadership is so corrupt, but I'm not. I lived through it myself. I doubt that my name is on their list of victims of unreported sexual assault but it should be. In my case, though, no one else silenced me. I did that myself, believing that it was what God wanted.

At eight years old I had already internalized a very profound belief: I didn't matter to God. How could I? He'd "called" my parents to a remote area of the world to spend their lives saving the lost from eternal damnation and my job was to stay out of the way. That's why, when I was molested by a stranger at 8, I didn't even consider telling my parents. I was sure that speaking up would get me in trouble for interfering with God's calling. That is the culture that the Southern Baptist Convention has been cultivating.

Over the years I've shifted the blame for my trauma a thousand times. Was it my fault somehow? Was it my parent's neglect? Was it the mission board's careless policies? Or Christianity in general? Possibly several of the above. But there's one thing I know for sure: No human being should ever, EVER feel the need to silently bear the burden of being sexually assaulted for the sake of the gospel. 

It devastates me that I ever believed I was worth so little to God, much less to my church and family. It breaks my heart to know that I wasn't the only one who had to bear that unspeakable trauma in silence. It outrages me that so many people have had their lives destroyed by an organization that claims to be doing God's work.

As people of my generation flee American evangelicalism in droves, it's infuriating to hear shock and confusion from those who are still devout. If you want to know why we're leaving, here it is: The evangelical "good news" is a slap in the face to those who have been traumatized and then silenced in the name of a loving God. I no longer attend church or profess to be a Christian, but if a good God does exist, he is undoubtedly disgusted by what this version of Christianity has become.

As we digest the news of the SBC report (only the latest in an exhausting list of similar scandals) we're bound to look for someone to blame. I pray with all of the faith that I have left that we won't let this horror be dismissed by placating statements about "some individuals" who "are not true representations" of Christian beliefs. When enough high-ranking "individuals" in an organization follow the same horrific path, it's time to stop deflecting or feigning shock. It's time to start showing compassion to those who have been silenced by tearing the offending organization down. 

If God is indeed great, he will applaud the fall of corrupt systems; even those that were in his name.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did eventually come forward about what happened. Nearly 20 years after the assault, I finally realized the implications of continuing to hide in shame. I filed an official report but too much time had gone by for any charges to be brought. What matters the most is that I'm no longer holding an innocent eight-year-old girl responsible to sacrifice her safety and emotional wellbeing for the sake of her religion. 

I deeply, truly hope that other survivors of sexual assault in religious settings will find the healing and real freedom that I have found. I hope we will finally hold the perpetrators accountable and stop letting this tragedy play out again and again.

The Lonely Bachelor: A Story About Vulnerability

I've noticed an interesting trend among my clients; particularly those who come to therapy because of a maladaptive behavior that's getting in their way. Often even if they've identified the problem and are motivated to change, they feel powerless. After experiencing disappointment over and over, they mostly believe that change is impossible. Clients with this mindset usually come to their first session looking defeated, skeptical, and often having already predicted that I won’t be able to help them. One of the first interventions I use with these clients is the Empathy Equation. Here's an example.

A client, let's call him Andrew, was a 40-year-old bachelor who was fed up with his long history of failed relationships. At our first session, Andrew said his goal was to learn how to be "less picky" about the women he chose to date. According to his assessment, the problem with his love life was that his standards were too high. He thought if he could learn how to settle for less attractive, successful, and confident women, he might finally find a long term partner. 

Naturally, I was struck by his automatic l assumption that the only thing he had the power to change were his expectations. While I agreed that he had unrealistic expectations, his pickiness didn’t seem to be the heart of the matter. After building trust, I gently encouraged him to tell me his story. Together, we discovered several traumatic events and abandonments early in his life that he had never validated or processed. He was forced to be the "man of the house" and the breadwinner in a rough city at a very young age. It had trained him to project confidence, hyper-masculinity, and perfection at all times to keep from getting stabbed in the back. The business he got involved in just to keep food on the table had required constant bravado and intimidation. Unfortunately, this habit had continued in his dating life. 

Andrew was baffled by the rejections that kept happening despite his best efforts. It would go like this: He'd meet a woman, hoping she'd finally be "the one". He'd spend their first couple dates trying desperately to impress her. He'd show off his spotless, chic apartment and wear clothes carefully chosen to flatter his body. He would brag about his career success, portray himself as fun and carefree, and tell his date about how many people relied on his wisdom and support.

His strategy of projecting absolute perfection inevitably backfired, though. Shocking, I know. If he didn't alienate the woman he was wooing with false arrogance, he would spiral as soon as any vulnerability was required. If she asked him about something he perceived to be a weakness, he would instantly feel humiliated and inadequate. To make the pain more bearable, he'd quickly pivot and identify a flaw in his date. He'd then fixate on it until he'd convinced himself that SHE wasn't good enough for HIM. Thus emerged his theory that his standards were simply too high. 

Andrew's denial about his shame had completely blinded him to the true cause of his relationship troubles. Even after identifying the true issue, several more weeks went by, the cycle playing out again and again. I suspect that deep down, Andrew was still holding out hope that his perfection gambit might work if he just tried hard enough. Finally, however, he was ready to accept the truth: His outdated defense mechanisms were pushing him to withhold empathy from others, and more importantly, from himself.

As the insight grew, he quietly told me a deeper version of his story. He said he'd only survived his traumatic childhood by using bravado to bluff his way out of danger. He had to pretend that he wasn’t wounded. There was no room for mistakes or weakness. As an adult, he’d just continued bragging, competing, and posturing to prove himself. Considering how much professional success it had brought him, the idea of intentionally letting down his guard felt completely counterintuitive. His inner caveman was driving the train. Cognitively, Andrew understood the problem, but when he had opportunities to show vulnerability, he would revert to his old habit and put up a front. 

The first few times he tried to go against his instincts, he had panic attacks, but he kept trying. Slowly but surely, the facade came down, revealing a much more relatable human underneath. By the end of our time working together he was in the longest relationship he’d ever been in. Not only had his love life improved, but the symptoms of depression and anxiety he'd felt for most of his life were significantly reduced.

So what exactly happened? Andrew had started out by noticing the feelings, beliefs and behaviors that were getting in his way. He'd been listening to the inner caveman for so long, he'd confused his behaviors with his identity. But as he started to investigate how his origin story had impacted him, the puzzle pieces fell together. Suddenly his frustrating feelings and habits made sense. Once he understood himself (aka learned self-empathy), he realized he wasn't trapped reacting the old way.

As he learned to have compassion on himself, he gained confidence that the true version of him could be known and loved. By detaching his unhelpful behaviors from his identity, he had the power to choose a different strategy than the one that had been sabotaging him for so long. Much like in my experience with the Bieber Incident, the Empathy Equation helped Andrew reach a deeper understanding of what he was feeling (shame, judgment), believing (survival requires perfection), and behaving (sabotage of intimacy). Once he had accessed self empathy, he gained control of himself.

Othering The Enemy

When beginning my internship hours to become a counselor, I took a job as a crisis interventionist in Dallas. I wasn't sure how I wanted to use my counseling license, and since regular therapy sounded boring, I made the most of my adrenaline-fueled skill of being “good in a crisis”. I had no idea how much vicarious trauma I was about to incorporate into my nightmares and future therapy sessions. You live, you learn, I guess.

I adjusted to a stressful but rewarding routine of driving to crisis situations each day, often working late into the night. My partner and I would be dispatched to meet people all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area who were struggling with things like suicidal ideation, acute trauma, psychosis, self-harm, substance use, domestic violence, and pretty much any other mental health crisis you can imagine. We worked closely with the police on many of these cases.

After two years of community crisis work, I transferred to the Dallas County Jail where I met with recently arrested inmates who had been flagged for suicide risk or other mental health concerns. My job was to assess their risk, connect them with resources, and most importantly, offer them empathy and emotional support. In many cases, I was meeting these clients on the worst day of their life and they were not always happy to see me.

My typical approach to therapy is to offer every client what Carl Rogers calls “unconditional positive regard”, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. This approach proved insufficient, however, the day I was assigned to counsel an inmate who had been arrested for raping a child. Having personally been the victim of sexual assault in my childhood, he was in the one category of humans that I had absolutely no positive regard for. I knew immediately that I needed a strategy that didn’t rely on my instincts.

The inmate (let’s call him “Joe”) was a registered sex offender who had already been convicted of sexual assault of a minor twice before but had been released on parole. The evidence indicated he was likely guilty of the new charges and would spend the rest of his life in prison. As I reviewed the jail records I had on him, I numbly noticed myself shutting down emotionally. I felt a familiar detachment from my body, a trauma response designed to help me ignore my racing heart and shortness of breath.

Taking some deep breaths, I thought about the challenge ahead of me. I could have referred this client to a colleague, but I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I encountered a trauma trigger at work. For better or worse, I wanted to confront it. The first step was to stop ignoring my intense reactions. I chose to consciously confront my obvious bias toward Joe.

Immediately, I realized that I saw all child molesters as monsters who were categorically undeserving of compassion. Recognizing this hatred in me made me more uncomfortable than I’d anticipated. If I genuinely wanted to help Joe rather than harm him, I couldn’t continue hating him. I needed to find a way to push past my instinctual disgust and stop seeing him as a monster. To do that, I needed to get to know his origin story.

As I sat at my desk in the courthouse preparing to meet Joe, I organized my thoughts. Crisis training had taught me empathy is essential for helping someone de-escalate from a crisis. This rapid-form of empathy requires the clinician to think about the person in crisis in the context of their identity and life experiences. Only with that perspective can the clinical can offer meaningful understanding.

I jotted down a list of questions to ask Joe that I hoped would help me understand him better. Who was he? What parts of his identity needed consideration? What had he been through? How did he see the world? What circumstances were contributing to his distress right now?

Feeling determined but sick to my stomach, I sat down outside his solitary confinement cell. Internally, I was repeating a mantra of “don’t judge, just listen” over and over. I bent over awkwardly to speak to him through the small feeding door to his cell. With as much gentleness as I could muster, I started asking him questions, taking notes as we went.

Joe was a Black man in his mid-thirties who had been raised in Texas by a drug-addicted single mother. He had been born into extreme poverty with a family history of mental illness and minimal education. All of this was saturated in the racial inequity that Black Americans face in the south. With these basic facts about his identity, I knew that Joe had been born into a life of adversity.

Next, I asked about his life experiences. He told me he had been the victim of multiple forms of abuse, including sexual assault, starting when he was still a toddler. Survivors of early childhood sexual assault often have a skewed understanding of consent and body autonomy if they don’t get the chance to really address it in therapy. Additionally, studies have found that perpetrators of sexual assault are extremely likely to have first experienced sexual trauma in their own childhood. 

Jail records informed me that in addition to his trauma history, Joe had untreated mental illness and had sustained multiple brain injuries that impaired his cognitive reasoning and impulse control. Sadly, he had never gotten the treatment he needed for these issues or even been educated on healthy sexuality and consent. Like most sex offenders, Joe didn’t spontaneously decide to abuse others without a catalyst; he was a victim first. He had already continued the cycle of abuse before anyone had told him that the violations that were done to him were tragic and wrong.

Lastly, I asked Joe what he was feeling that day, crouched in his cold, solitary cell. Due to his suicide risk, he was wearing nothing but a thin paper gown. He was humiliated and terrified of the inevitable violence that awaited him in the general population. He said it was like living a nightmare that was never going to be over. I imagined Joe as a small vulnerable child, afraid and desperate for understanding.

As we spoke, I was surprised at how quickly my empathy bloomed. I found myself genuinely moved by his story. He wept as he told me that I was the first person who had ever cried about the things he had been through. He hadn’t expected anyone in the world to show him kindness. I no longer saw a sociopath or a monster in him, I simply saw a human who was hurting.

When I left work that day, I felt like I’d been through a battle but I knew something life-changing had happened. Setting aside my anger and disgust to find out who Joe really was had been a healing experience I wasn't expecting. Since then, I’ve seen this kind of intentional empathy play out in astonishing ways over and over, affirming that my interaction with Joe was not a fluke.