When Religion Hurts You
Healing from religious trauma and the impact of high control religion
A trauma-informed book providing education on:
What is religious trauma?
Trauma physiology and the nervous system
Adverse Religious Experiences and Religious Abuse
Living in a healing body after experiencing high control religion and religious trauma
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In When Religion Hurts You, Dr. Laura Anderson draws on her training as a trauma therapist, scientific research, and personal experiences of growing up in a high demand/high control religious system and resolving the trauma that resulted, to offer hope for what life can be after deconstructing and/or deconverting from one’s faith. This groundbreaking book explains what religious trauma is, how it lives in our bodies, adverse religious experiences, and what living in a healing body after religious trauma can be like.
Laura challenges the cultural beliefs suggesting bad church experiences are simply a result of sinful humans and instead helps the reader recognize how messaging, beliefs, and practices present in high demand/high control religions can have a multi-dimensional impact, creating the need for healing to happen in multiple dimensions as well. Instead of viewing healing as an end point which someone arrives at and is done healing, Laura offers the consideration that healing is an ongoing process that encompasses every moment and aspect of life. Using a blend of real-life examples and research, this book offers the reader education while inspiring hope that reclaiming their life after adverse religious experiences and/or religious trauma is both possible and is already happening in the day-to-day moments of life.
About the Book
Religion has been accepted as a positive, supportive factor in our culture. While many people recognize this as their reality, a growing number of people are speaking out and seeking help as they realize the experiences they had in religious groups and systems are leaving long-lasting, intense impacts that researchers and clinicians are identifying as trauma. Contrary to previous thought, religious trauma is not resolved by merely rejecting one’s faith, belief system, or ideology and embracing atheism.
Religious trauma is trauma. Like all trauma, the process of resolving trauma and reclaiming one’s life is complex and multi-dimensional–but it is possible.