Do you have religious trauma?
Marlene Winell, author of LEAVING THE FOLD founder of Journey Free, an organization dedicated to helping people deconstruct from toxic faith, coined the term “Religious Trauma Syndrome”.
The term describes the multi-layered experiences of those who have been hurt by being a part of a rigid spiritual belief system. It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD).
With RTS, the trauma is two-fold. First, the actual teachings and practices of a restrictive religion can be toxic and create life-long mental damage. In many cases, the emotional and mental abuse is compounded by physical and sexual abuse due to the patriarchal, repressive nature of the environment.
Second, departing a religious fold adds enormous stress as an individual struggles with leaving what amounts to one world for another. This usually involves significant and sudden loss of social support while facing the task of reconstructing one’s life. People leaving are often ill-prepared to deal with this, both because they have been sheltered and taught to fear the secular world and because their personal skills for self-reliance and independent thinking are underdeveloped.
Cassandra Brandt, author of A Backslider’s Guide to Getting Over God: Journey of an Evangelical Apostate is a religious trauma survivor and a scholar with a background in sociology who studies the intersection between religion and psychology.