Religious Trauma: Survival vs. Safety
The following interview is a transcript from a recent episode of the Dismantle Podcast. If you prefer to listen to the audio version, there are links to this and other podcast episodes on my Resources Page.
Joey: Brian, how were you introduced to church, to faith, to spirituality? What's your origins with that?
Brian: I only have a few memories of life before church. My parents got saved when I was three or four years old, and I was deeply involved in church all the way until one year of Bible college as a young adult. In my experience, church was everything. I attended Christian schools, K-12, I did short-term mission trips, and read the Bible cover to cover. Much of my life was about trying to measure up to the impossible standards of, at times, really punishing fundamentalist and conservative religion. My entire life was consumed by church — we went to church on Wednesday nights, twice on Sundays, and volunteered and other things throughout the week.
As far as spirituality is concerned, I was drawn to nature at a young age and I attempted to connect my love of nature with my love of God.
As a teenager, I would do solo camping trips in the mountains to, “commune with God,” but there was a sort of disconnect. It's hard to describe, but what I knew about God in my mind, didn't always correspond with what I felt when I was connecting with nature.
The term “spiritual” is still a challenging word because of how I viewed it inside of a fundamentalist religious understanding. Now, when I connect with my experience of wonder and awe, it’s more meaningful to me than how I understood spirituality from a religious perspective.
In a lot of ways, religion was a disembodied experience that didn't honor my humanity. It was the beliefs in my head, it was the narrative, it was a story, it was believing the right things, and not believing other things. Religion tended to be more of a mental or intellectual experience than an embodied experience.
How do you define spiritual or religious trauma?
Joey: We're talking about spiritual and religious trauma, and some people have never, up until this point, put those two words together. But I think words mean everything, especially when we try to define things. So Brian, just so we're all on the same page, how do you personally define spiritual or religious trauma? Are they the same thing, or do they tend to differ?
Brian: As you pointed out, words do mean a lot, and on the other hand, much of our experience exists without language. So, I’ll honor the question by answering with words, but from a trauma therapist's perspective, a lot of our experience exists within our felt-sense experience.
First, before I answer the question, I think it's important to distinguish between abuse and trauma. In very simplistic terms, abuse is the thing that happened to you, and trauma is our physiological response to those events. This distinction is important when we talk about spiritual trauma or religious trauma.
Let’s start with how we define spiritual abuse, which is the conscious or unconscious use of power to direct, control, or manipulate another's body, thoughts, emotions, actions, capacity for choice, freedom, or autonomy of self within a spiritual or religious context. I know that's a mouthful, but basically, it's this misuse of power — using spiritual language or a spiritual context to exercise control over another person. Again, that would be the thing that happens to you in terms of spiritual abuse.
When it comes to trauma, this is a working definition that I currently use for religious trauma: the physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures, that overwhelms an individual's ability to cope and return to a sense of safety.
And so again, it’s the response to the abuse. In terms of distinguishing between spiritual trauma versus religious trauma, there's probably more overlap than there are distinctions there. And I think it's in part due to how one views spirituality versus religion. Religion can be seen as the structures — it's a group, it's a place, or specific practices, whereas spirituality can be a bit more of an individual or internal experience.
There's a lot of overlap between religious trauma and spiritual trauma. So, when I talk about religious trauma, it's often focused on high-demand groups, more rigid fundamentalist groups, and how those doctrines, beliefs, and practices impact humans. But it also includes spiritual communities, yoga, Buddhist communities, other forms of spirituality. Whenever there are humans involved, there's the potential for power control to be used against folks. So, there are distinctions, but there's a lot of overlap as well.
Religious vs. Secular Therapists
Joey: One of the follow up questions to that would then be, say we're experiencing the effects of abuse, there's trauma in our life connected to religious and or spiritual entities, for lack of a better word. I've heard this a lot, that it's best to seek out Christian perspectives when dealing with Christian issues. And in my personal experience, that has worked to a degree. What are some of your thoughts about seeking religious professionals who identify themselves with the religious label, versus those who would identify from a secular standpoint?
Brian: The short answer is, “it depends.” As you pointed out, Christians are often encouraged to only seek out Christian therapists or to keep things within the church structure — meet with your pastor or your religious leaders. And for some folks, there's value in that.
It may or may not surprise you that on the secular side of things, post-religious folks, folks who have left religion for whatever reason, are often encouraged to only seek out secular therapists. I think, by and large, licensed mental health professionals are trained to keep their personal beliefs and their biases on their side of the room, and for the most part, professionals who do this work, do a fairly decent job at that. However, we humans have implicit biases, and that can impact treatment.
It really depends on why you're seeking out assistance or support. If you're looking for help with something like work-related anxiety or something that's not connected to religion or spirituality, you could probably work with a religious therapist as a non believer or work with a secular therapist as a believer, and you'd be able to work really effectively together. However, if the source of your trauma is spiritual or religious in nature, that could change things. The implicit biases of your therapist may have a significant impact on your treatment.
So, it’s important to consider that when you're answering the question, does a Christian seek out a secular therapist or vice versa? It's gonna depend on if that’s going to impact treatment or not. One of the most important elements of therapy is the therapeutic relationship that you have. If there's anything making that feel less safe for you, or you're not able to connect with the person, then that can be an issue.
I can't tell you how many times folks have told me that they had been working with a therapist for a while, and then one day, they discover that they hold these religious beliefs, or are part of a religious organization that was harmful to them personally. So, while the therapist may be able to keep that on their side of the room, and not impose their judgments in the therapy space, it can be really difficult, especially when safety is so essential to the trauma healing process. It may be difficult for a client to feel safe enough to move forward in that context.
I don't think there's a simple answer, or a right or wrong answer to that question. However, I would consider the background of the therapist, what their current beliefs are, and how that might impact your level of safety in that relationship. I encourage folks to ask their therapist, “what are your beliefs and how do you view the world?” Many therapists will try to sidestep that question, because they have this idea that a therapist should be able to work with anyone. While that's true to a degree, there's also the possibility that you're just not a good fit for reasons out of your control, or things that you may not personally think would impact treatment.
I also frequently hear folks describe therapists who want to pray with them, or encourage them to go back to their church, or resolve their issues within a context that may not be safe for them. That can make it difficult for a client to feel safe in a therapeutic relationship if they're being encouraged to do things that don't feel safe to them personally.
Why do folks distrust church?
Joey: I think a lot of people may notice that their trauma stems from church, that's sort of the origin point, but they really can't identify it much deeper than that. Maybe they’re, I don't want to call it apathetic, but definitely a nonspecific distaste for church. Sometimes it is very specific, and they know exactly where it came from, but other times, it’s just sort of this...I can't even find the word because it's just sort of like, “I just don't like church.” What happens when we're not sure of why we distrust church or religious entities like that?
Brian: I think first, it's important to acknowledge that organizations are not safe for humans. This is not as nefarious as it might sound, it simply means that organizations prioritize the needs of the group over the needs of individual members.
When it comes to “I don't feel safe, or there's just something that's not quite right here,” we may be tempted to push past that and place our trust in the leaders, or the group, or what's expected. Especially when the group is also a source of support, comfort, or safety for us.
I encourage folks to begin to trust themselves and their nervous system. If something feels off to you, if something just doesn't quite sit well with you, if you don't quite feel okay here, it may or may not indicate that there is something harmful, risky, or dangerous for you. However, it will be important to make that decision from a place of safety, as opposed to from a place of control.
If there's just that feeling of “this doesn't feel quite right to me, but I can't point to anything specific,” maybe zoom out a bit and notice. What is it about the structure? How much control do I have here, versus how much control do I relinquish in this setting? Can I say what I need to say and have that respected and honored? Or, do I need to go along in order to survive?
A lot of times, and especially in more fundamentalist groups, folks are able to survive inside of a church environment, but they're not able to feel safe. It's really important to distinguish between survival versus safety because those two words are not interchangeable.
We can survive inside of a freeze collapse response, for example. Your nervous system is overwhelmed, you don't feel safe, but you can just go along. You can survive in please appease physiology and do whatever is expected in order to live another day. If you go along with what the group is telling you, then you get to survive. However, you don't get to feel safe, because safety requires a certain amount of strength, power, and the ability to make your own choices and to move more freely in the world.
When we mistake survival for safety, we might think, “well, I guess I'm okay here, nothing is too terrible, I can't point to anything specific.” But there's just this felt-sense that I'm not quite okay. It’s important for us to really honor that awareness, and to ask ourselves, “what do I need to feel safe?”
Sometimes safety comes from being able to say “no” or to push back, even if it’s just a temporary thing. I'm saying “no” to this thing and I'm seeing if I can survive. “Is that okay for me, can I trust my aggression? Can I trust my ability to have boundaries inside of a group?” We often don't really notice how significant this is, until there's a transition.
I sometimes use this example. If you've been backpacking before, you might initially notice the weight of the backpack when you first put it on, and then you're just hiking. The backpack is just there in the background. People may even add weight to the backpack as you're going along — a pound here, a pound there. You simply adjust to it and keep going. But when you set it down, or when something shifts or changes, you're like, “Whoa, that was really heavy!”
As humans, our nervous system will adapt and adjust to a threat environment fairly quickly, however, it's more challenging for us to adjust to feeling safe. When there's an on-edge feeling, or something just isn't quite okay for us, we may not notice how significant it is until we have some space, some distance, or there’s been a transition.
Sometimes that can happen in a really big way. Other times it happens in smaller ways. You can be harmed in some significant way and decided that this church is no longer safe and okay for you. And then when you leave, you have this huge sigh of relief, like, “woah, that was really heavy. There was a lot of oppression and a lot of control. That wasn't okay for me.” You didn't notice when you were inside of it, but you noticed when you had a bit of space. It may be something subtle, like you finally stood up and said, “This isn't okay for me, you don't get to control me this way.” That can also result in noticing, “Oh, that's what this underlying unease has been about — it's about how I fit into the structure and how ill fitting it is for me.”
What are the effects of not dealing with religious trauma?
Joey: What are some of the lasting effects of not dealing with trauma in religious spheres? What we've discussed up until now is sort of recognizing that things are not okay. What happens if you don't recognize that, or you do recognize it and you don't want to deal with it?
Brian: That's a heavy question. I work with a lot of folks who come to this realization long after the fact, they've lived with trauma for years and years, and then there's a moment where they realize it wasn't okay — what happened, what they experienced, how they were treated.
Often this realization connects to all those other times they wished they could have said “no” and they were unable to. In general, this goes with trauma independent of the source, but we're talking about religious trauma in this context. Trauma has this unresolved quality to it. At a very basic level, trauma is the result of an experience where I needed to do something to defend or protect myself, but I was unable to because the situation was too overwhelming, the oppressor was too strong, or I didn't have options. I needed to escape to safety, but I wasn't permitted to escape.
Later, we may find ourselves in a safer context, but there's still an unresolved and underlying feeling of powerlessness that persists. We can think about an event that happened in our childhood, where we learned, in that moment, that the world is not a safe place — this relationship, this person is not safe. As adults, we can think, “I'm an adult now, I have my own place, I can make my own choices, no one can control me that way again.” However, unless the trauma is resolved and we undermine that initial experience, what we learned about the world in that previous experience will persist. Our nervous system will continue to respond to the world with that same feeling, that sense of “I'm not able to do what's necessary to defend or protect myself.”
Those are some of the lasting impacts of trauma, it's often an underlying feeling of not being safe. This feeling may present as bracing against the world, it could be this feeling of waiting for the next shoe to drop, it could be this tensing up against life. It can present in a lot of different ways, but it's that underlying persistent sense of something isn't quite right.
In order for your nervous system to trust yourself again, it needs to have an experience where it is strong, where it is powerful, where you are able to do what you wish you could have done then, in the here and the now, or to approximate an effective survival response in some way. These kinds of experiences allow your body to begin to trust yourself.
We can think about the example I gave of an experience in your childhood. And you could convince yourself logically, rationally, “I am an adult, I can make choices now, I shouldn't feel like I'm a little kid and I can't make my own choices.” Because rationally, logically, I can see there's no threat and I'm capable now.
But our nervous system doesn't speak English. Our nervous system doesn't really care about our story or our narrative. For us to just honor that, to respect that, to recognize that resolving trauma is not telling ourselves a different story, or trying to change the narrative in some way. It's answering the question, “what does your body need to feel safer, stronger, and more connected?” That's a very different approach than trying to convince ourselves that we're okay.
Those lasting effects can present in a lot of different ways. However, at the heart of them, there’s an unresolved quality to trauma, and in order for my body to trust myself again, there needs to be some new experiences to undermine those old ones.
Reenacting vs. Resolving Religious Trauma
Joey: Now, going off of that, one of the things I've heard often is that sometimes to rewire traumatic experiences you need to be in the same place that you experienced the trauma so that your brain can remap and rewire the experience to something positive. Does that connect on a spiritual realm? Walk with me here on this experiment, if you were going to do that, and if you adhered to that mentality, the mentality would suggest, well, then you just need to go back to church, and figure out how to rewrite that in a positive way. But that's not always safe, Right?
Brian: Yes, I think there's some truth in what you're saying. However, there's also a truth in, going back to a place that's unsafe for you is not going to be the conditions in which you can have that new experience, at least not typically. When it comes to trauma, there's often this need to renegotiate it, and often survivors, without intending to, reenact their trauma.
Using religion as an example, a person may leave religion as a result of the abuse they experience inside of it, and then find themselves in a different group, a different organization, and they're pushing against the leadership in a similar way. Their body is trying to have a similar experience, they're reenacting the experience they had where they experienced the trauma, but now they're trying to do that in a way that they survive and they're safe.
To use an unrelated example, we could think of a person who experienced trauma as a result of a car accident. Then they find themselves in situations where they're driving fast on a similar road, and turning in time to avoid the crash. They're going around the curve pretty fast, but this time they're maintaining control. What their nervous system is trying to do there, by reenacting the initial trauma, they're trying to have a new experience where they are safe.
We see this in folks who have been harmed within a relationship — they find a similar kind of relationship, but this time, they say “no” or escape in time. These examples are a bit riskier examples of renegotiating trauma. To your point, saying I was harmed in a religious context, so now I'm going to go back to church to try to reenact that or renegotiate that trauma, that may end badly. It may work as well, I want to certainly consider the possibility that it could work.
I think a more effective way of doing that, would be exploring “what do I need to have a foundation of safety first?” Maybe I don't need to reenact that trauma in the same context in which I was harmed, but I can have similar experiences in a safe and supportive context, where I have the felt sense of having done what I needed to do then. Maybe working with a trauma therapist who is able to hold enough safety and space for you to imagine what it would have been like to stand up in that church service and say, “No, I see what you're trying to do here, you're trying to use fear to control me, and I'm not okay with that. Don't treat me this way!”
It's not surprising to us humans, that we can recall a scary event and have a visceral physical response to that memory. That happens all the time. A person can say something that triggers that memory and all sudden, our heart is beating fast and we’re like, “oh, this isn't safe.” It's easy for us to recognize that experience. What we often don't recognize is that, in the same way we can have a real physical response to a perceived threat or the memory of a threat, we can have a real physiological experience of safety, of strength, and of power to a perceived experience of safety. So, we may not have to go back to the same context in which we were harmed in order to resolve that. We can approximate that response in a way that communicates to our nervous system that we're safe and okay now. We can feel what it feels like to have done what we needed to do THEN, in a very powerful way that communicates to our nervous system NOW.
I would say there's some truth to, if you were harmed in church, then when you're at a place where you feel safe and strong, then maybe visiting a church again and having the experience of, “am I okay or not, I'm not sure if I'm okay?” Feeling that, experiencing that. What is it like to notice now that I can leave if I want to? Noticing that I'm not controlled by the same level of shame or control in this environment. That can be a very powerful thing. However, it's not always helpful if you've been abused in a relationship to go back to that same relationship. I understand why survivors will do that. And again, I think it has to do with trying to renegotiate trauma by reenacting it. However, I think it's important to do your work first, to have enough strength and power and safety, for that to be a helpful experience.
What can the church do about religious trauma?
Joey: Brian, as we bring our time to a close, what's something that you think the church could do to move in a more positive direction around people who have been scarred or harmed by church, or experienced trauma even to the degree of abuse? What do you think a first step could be?
Brian: To simply be honest, would be a really big start. To recognize, like I mentioned earlier, that organizations aren't safe for humans, that the church itself is prioritizing the reputations of leaders and how it's perceived by the world. To say, “we get it wrong sometimes. We've hurt people.” To acknowledge that with some humility, with some honesty, I think would go a long way to beginning to create contexts in which individual members within the organization can feel safe saying, “what happened to me was not okay.”
To have that validated, to have that acknowledged. Then for churches to do something to create contexts where there's more accountability, where there's less secrecy, where the power is more horizontal, as opposed to vertical in leadership. Prioritizing consent would be huge. In a medical setting, or a therapeutic setting, informed consent is so important. While I have every intention of being helpful in the work that I do, I also recognize there's a potential for harm. To be honest about that is so important, because that empowers your clients, that empowers the members of your organization. Church can harm you. Say that upfront. Point out how folks can be harmed, so that members can begin to protect themselves.
Not only does that build some honesty and authenticity, it also makes church a better place, it makes it a safer place, it actually could improve the organization. I think the resistance to doing this is also built into the evolutionary function of groups. If your group places high demands on you, you're more likely to stick around. If the group says, “we have something to offer, if it works for you, stick around, if it doesn't, we'll wish you all the best. Carry on.” It's hard to build community when there's that level of consent, that level of respect. So, I think organizations often don't do it because if they were to really honor another person's autonomy and humanity, they may not stick around. If that's a threat to the organization, then why would they want to prioritize that?
There certainly are a lot of things that churches can do to become safer and to reduce the amount of harm. There are so many things that perpetuates abuse inside of organizations — it’s the circling the wagons, it's the protecting the reputation of the organization or leaders who have harmed folks. Just beginning with, “We're not perfect, and we're going to get things wrong, and we're going to hurt people. Not because we are intending to, but this is what we do, and this is how we acknowledge that, and this is how we seek justice in those situations.” That can make a huge impact.
I work with a lot of folks who have left organizations, and the feedback that organizations get is often missing their stories, missing their experiences. If you are no longer part of the church, then they can wash their hands of you, they don't have to change their behavior as a result of the impacts that they’ve had in your life. They can just go on as it always was. So, I'm hoping that by learning more about the experiences that folks have, churches can do better.
I want to mention that over at the Religious Trauma Institute we have an exploratory survey on adverse religious experiences. Our working definition of Adverse Religious Experiences, is any experience of a religious belief, practice, or structure that undermines an individual's sense of safety or autonomy, and or negatively impacts their physical, social, emotional, relational, or psychological well being.
The reason we've introduced this term, is to recognize that not every experience inside of religion results in trauma. However, they can have negative impacts. We have over 2,000 folks who have completed the survey so far, and I just want to share the top five things that folks felt. “At the time, I felt shame.” That's number one, followed by powerless, fear, unworthy and isolated. Those are the top five things that people feel when they encounter an adverse religious experience.
Folks also experienced blaming themselves, depression, social anxiety, difficulty making decisions, and interpersonal conflicts. After some time has passed, they continue to feel distrustful of others, angry, sadness, shame, and rejection. We noticed that shame is the primary thing that people feel in the moment, which, as we understand trauma, that makes a lot of sense. It's still in the top five as something that they continue to feel. But the number one thing that folks feel ongoing is that it’s really hard to trust others.
If we can create conditions within organizations where there can be trust, where we can acknowledge when we're wrong, where there can be ways of seeking resolution. Resolving some of those issues that can go a long way to building trust again.
Brian Peck, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in religious trauma and supporting folks with a history of adverse religious experiences. In addition to helping survivors resolve religious trauma, Brian is passionate about reducing the stigma attached to non-believers, especially those who have exited high-demand religious communities.