What is Religious Trauma?
The question I am asked most frequently is “what is religious trauma?”
I believe that understanding what religious trauma is, is essential in healing from it. Many people believe that religious trauma is what results from something like clergy sexual abuse or intense cult practices. And while these things are horrendous and often do result in religious trauma, they are not, unto themselves, religious trauma.
The definition that my colleagues and I (from the Religious Trauma Institute and Reclamation Collective) came up with a few years ago is that religious trauma is The physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that overwhelm an individual’s ability to cope and return to a sense of safety.
This definition could seem a little overwhelming, so let’s break it down a bit. Simply put:
Religious trauma is trauma.
The word ‘religious’ in front of trauma is an adjective…essentially, it explains a bit more about the context from where the trauma resulted. It’s similar from how we would discuss developmental trauma (trauma resulting from experiences in your childhood or developmental years) or sexual trauma (trauma resulting from things like sexualized abuse or violence). When we recognize religious trauma as trauma (rather than a separate diagnosis that requires new research, interventions, etc.) we can pull from the amazing research that has been ongoing for decades in helping us understand what religious trauma isn’t, and what it is.
Researchers such as Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and Peter Levine have done amazing work in helping advance what we know about trauma today. Along with researcher Stephen Porges, these academics have been able to break down elusive concepts of what trauma is and update it from old, unhelpful definitions of what trauma used to be thought of. Essentially, what research shows us is that trauma is not a thing that happens to us but rather the way our nervous system responds to a thing(s) that happen to us. Simply that means that trauma is not found in an event, belief, practice, relationship, or structure BUT the way our nervous system responds to an event, belief, practice, relationship, or structure, may be so overwhelming that it circumvents our ability to naturally cope with what is going on and would not allow us to come back to a space of safety.
It’s important to be clear about this: trauma is not found in a thing or event. That means even grotesque, dangerous, scary, or overwhelming things are not, unto themselves, traumatic. This means that something like clergy sexual abuse or intense cult practices may be both awful and abusive but not living in someone’s body as trauma.
If we go back to the working definition of religious trauma above, we see that trauma is a physical, emotional, or psychological response to a religious belief, practice, or structure that overwhelms someone’s capacity to cope and return to a sense of safety. Oftentimes this can look like being stuck in fight, flight, or freeze in response to a religious belief, practice, or structure. This could be pervasive feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and shame as a result of religious practices and messaging. Maybe it’s a pervasive feeling of terror and fear as a result of messaging around your body, your sexuality, your gender, or your relationships.
How something results in religious trauma for one person is dependent on many different factors–most of which are beyond your conscious control. How someone is wired–that is, their DNA–plays into how they might respond in the face of real, perceived, or remembered danger. Other things like history, access to safe and caring relationships, coping skills, and many more things lay at the foundation of how a person’s body may interpret something that is overwhelming. Even two siblings that grew up in the same home with the same parents, same religious beliefs and generally some of the same life experiences, may have very different experiences of religion and religious messaging. This does not mean that one sibling (or person) was stronger, better equipped, or that there was something wrong with the sibling (or person) who handled things differently. Instead, this just helps us recognize that we are all different in the way our bodies and nervous systems interpret things.
I mentioned earlier that religious trauma is subjective. What this means is that what is traumatic for you, may or may not be for me, and vice versa. This not only means that you and your sibling(s) could have grown up in the same environment with very different resulting experiences–it also means that the experiences you went through may have been scary or abusive but may or may not live in your body as trauma. This is where a lot of people get confused: we assume that the worse the experience (such as, but not limited to, clergy sexual abuse) the more likely that it is trauma. And to some extent, this could be a true–or truer–statement. There is a lot of research (think of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study) that hypothesizes that the more experiences of adversity a child has in their upbringing, the likelier it is that they would develop complex trauma. I think the same could be true with religious trauma as well (and research is just starting in this area!) That is: the more adverse religious experiences someone has, the more likely it would be that religious trauma would be the result.
So what is religious trauma then? Religious trauma can result from anything that is too much, too soon, or too fast in the context of religion that overwhelms your ability to cope and return to a sense of safety. This could be prompted by a single incident (think of a scary alter call!) or messages and experiences over the years (think of purity culture, messages of total depravity, or the doctrine of hell) that overwhelm us to the point where we are unable to cope or feel safe. The overwhelm could be prompted by something that others were not as impacted by or something that many were impacted by. It may be something that your family members think wasn’t that big of a deal even though you experienced it as big, scary, or inducing powerlessness. Religious trauma could result from anything, big or small, within a religious context.
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