Helping Discover Your Truth

You can find freedom from fear. Who you are is not a mistake.

“There is no good or evil, only thought makes it so”

William Shakespeare, from Hamlet

Do you ever feel like you want to find your own path in life but feel afraid that even exploring that subject might bring about the loss of love; the love of God or the love of your community?

Do you ever doubt in your own emotions and have a hard time trusting in yourself?

Have you ever experienced someone telling you they love you or trying to show you appreciation but it feels unbelievable or like something remote that you want to connect to but don’t know how?

These are just some of the experiences that are common for people who experience religious trauma.

What is Religious Trauma and Does it Differ From PTSD?

Our beliefs and experiences related to God or religion are very sensitive subjects and we want to honor that. Many of us, for good or for bad have given years of our lives to a religious belief system. We at religious trauma counseling have a respect for all the world’s religions; We want everyone who visits this site to understand 1st and foremost that our purpose is not to take anything anyway from you that you believe or try to turn you into an atheist. We are here to support you on your journey of discovering what you really want in your life.

Religion can mean a lot of different things to us, however, when one’s religion or spiritual beliefs start to become the root of anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, fear or shame this is quite different. This is where we want to come in and support you. To help you discover for yourself what is useful and helpful to you and what is not. What is the truth for YOU?

Whatever your religion or belief system; we feel that a healthy individual or collective belief system in a divine higher power should support inner stability, healthy self reflection and serenity; not inner fear, self hatred, and shame. The word Religion comes from the Latin word, “Religare” and originally has the same definition as yoga; “to reunite or union”. This implies something that takes us back to our source.

Unfortunately for many people “religions” or even “God” may have taken on a meaning that we find scary, hypocritical or shameful. It often no longer serves to reunite us to our source or to serenity but rather is used in the service of a person or organization. We strangely may even feel compelled to stay connected to our beliefs even when they make us feel afraid or ashamed. Why is this?

According to American psychologist, educator and writer, Dr. Marlene Winell, millions of people around the world suffer from a condition called Religious Trauma Syndrome. It’s a set of simultaneous symptoms and characteristics that are related to harmful experiences with religion, and are the result of immersion in a controlling religion, or sometimes its due to the secondary impact of leaving a religious group.

Religious Trauma is a condition that can be experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination and attachment trauma. They may be going through the shattering of a personally meaningful faith and/or breaking away from a controlling community and lifestyle. Religious Trauma is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of losing a sense of certainty about truth and reality that comes from having a religion.

If you grow up as a child within a religion community, receiving the love and acceptance of a parent is connected with following the beliefs of the religion and the community regardless if you fully understand it. Not following the strict rules of the group, or standing up for different individual views you hold may result in disconnection from your parents and their love as well as the divine source. Leaving or having different views from your culture might mean losing everything you love. The possibility of losing your connection to God and by association your family, can be incredibly frightening and devastating to someone considering stepping away from their religion or community.

Like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Religious Trauma has a very recognizable set of symptoms and a definitive set of causes. It can also express itself in a debilitating cycle of self abuse. There are ways to stop the abuse and recover. At this website you can find counselors who are trained to help you find a way to feel ok with yourself and your personal life decisions.

Will Therapy Interfere With Your Current Belief Systems?

All the Counselors and therapists that work through our website have the greatest respect for others beliefs that have often formed the foundation for peoples perceptions of reality. We are not anti-religion. Our religions, good or bad, did give us a sense of certainty, and or community. We hold a profound love and respect for all religions and a recognition that they can provide a sense of peace and serenity when they are presented in a healthy context. But if you are on this website reading this page, chances are great that you did not grow up and experience a healthy sense of a comforting, compassionate religious experience.

We respect your beliefs and no therapist at any time will try to convert you to what they believe or interfere with your self-evident truths. We honor your beliefs and simply want to help you reduce fear and anxiety. We also want to help you explore whether or not your beliefs are truly helping you to feel safely connected to yourself, others and the divine.

Symptoms of Religious Trauma

Cognitive: Confusion, poor critical thinking ability, negative beliefs about self-ability & self-worth, black & white thinking, perfectionism, difficulty with decision-making.

Emotional: Depression, anxiety, anger, grief, loneliness, difficulty with pleasure, loss of meaning, panic attacks and nightmares.

Social: Loss of social network, family rupture, social awkwardness, sexual difficulty, behind schedule on developmental tasks.

Cultural: Unfamiliarity with secular world; “fish out of water” feelings, difficulty belonging, information gaps (e.g. evolution, modern art, music).

Causes of Religious Trauma

Religious Authoritarianism coupled with toxic theology which is received and reinforced at church, school, and home results in:

Suppression of normal child development – cognitive, social, emotional, moral stages of development are arrested.
Suppression of normal thinking and feeling abilities -information is limited and controlled; dysfunctional beliefs taught; independent thinking condemned; emotions not seen as information but condemned or equivalated with sin.
External locus of control – knowledge is revealed, not discovered; hierarchy of authority enforced; self not a reliable or good source.
Physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse – patriarchal power; unhealthy sexual views; punishment used for discipline.

Cycle of Abuse

In some Christian faiths, for example, the doctrines of original sin and eternal damnation can cause psychological anguish for someone by creating the ultimate double bind. You may feel that you are guilty and responsible, and face eternal punishment even when you still believe in God and do all you can to follow the teachings. Yet you have no ability to do anything about it. You must conform to a mental test of “believing” in an external, unseen source for salvation, and maintain this state of belief until death. You may feel guilty all the time as you cannot ever stop sinning altogether, so you must continue to confess to be forgiven, hoping that you have met the criteria despite complete lack of feedback about whether you will actually make it to heaven. Salvation is not a free gift after all. To some God may seem to be an angry or vengeful God even though we are also told that he is unconditionally loving. This can be a strange riddle to figure out, and can feel very confusing. For some sincere believers, this results in an unending cycle of shame and relief.

Stopping the Cycle

Stopping the cycle will look different for different people, however when it happens there can be a sense of freedom, excitement about information and new experiences, new-found self-respect, integrity, and the sense of an emerging identity.

There are huge challenges as well. The psychological damage does not go away overnight. In fact, because the phobic indoctrination in young childhood is so powerful, for some, the fear of hell can last a lifetime despite rational analysis. Likewise the damage to self-concept and basic self-trust can be crippling. This is living with Religious Trauma Syndrome.

For some people it is continuing to feel the effects of being used sexually, for others it a fear of death, and still for others it may be a betrayal or disillusionment by a spiritual teacher. Whatever the case religious trauma can be frightening and disorienting. Let us help support you as you find the way out.

Mistaken Diagnosis

According the Dr. Winell and our own observations; Religious Trauma Syndrome shares the same symptoms of many other disorders:

post-traumatic stress disorder
clinical depression
anxiety disorders
bipolar disorder
obsessive compulsive disorder
borderline personality disorder
eating disorders
social disorders
marital and sexual dysfunctions
suicide
drug and alcohol abuse
extreme antisocial behavior, including homicide

The reality is that often religious trauma is at the basis of these other symptoms. There are many extreme cases of Religious Trauma, including child abuse of all kinds, suicide, rape, and murder. Not as extreme but also tragic are all the people who are struggling to make sense of life after losing their whole basis of reality. None of the previously named diagnoses quite tells the story, and many who try to get help from the mental health profession cannot find a therapist who understands. If you have never lived within or grown up in a closed religious community it can be hard to understand.

The counselors and healing professionals of religious trauma counseling have been selected based upon their direct understanding, and work from a trauma informed perspective and training. Most of us have ourselves experienced living within closed religious communities. As well we have many years of extensive training and work in the field of psychology. We all have respect and understanding for people personal belief systems and are not interested in converting you to another religious view. We hold a deep respect for people’s beliefs and experiences and work to help clients find their own path. One that supports you in becoming free of anxiety, depression and shame. One that allows you to discover for yourself what is spiritual or divine. or not. There is room here for you to find your own truth, your own gnosis.

Why Somatic Therapy is Superior to Talk Therapy for Any Kind of Religious Trauma

Many of our clients have reported to us that talk therapy just seems to be an endless exploration of personal history that often leads to amplifying the pain and reliving the trauma experiences over and over through telling the stories over and over. Recent neuroscience research continues to suggest that old style psychodynamic talk therapy and exposure therapies actually can be retraumatizing and reinforce the negative beliefs that one holds about oneself.

Cognitive Behavioral therapy introduced an important new version of therapy to clinical psychological practice by helping people to examine their thinking and teaching them how to interrupt and be mindful of their negative thought patterns. Cognitive therapy focuses on identifying cognitive distortions and their negative impact on our lives. While this definitely has great benefit, cognitive therapy does not address the nervous system imbalances that drive cognitive distortions; particularly when working with early childhood trauma, the research of Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk and others has demonstrated that cognitive therapy is only minimally effective. In the case of religious trauma, if you are raised in a family where fear and love are intimately connected, it is important to understand that for a child connection is an essential need to learn and survive. So focusing on changing cognitive distortions is particularly ineffective because the neo cortex is not even yet fully developed in the brain, and so it is the underlying bottom up nervous system and affective imbalances that drive the cognitive distortions that we experience as we get older.

We Specialize and Have Experience Working With

7th day Adventists
Mormons
Jehovah Witnesses
Muslims; Shia and Sunni, Abuse from within Sufi schools
Scientologists
Children of God
Catholics and Evangelicals
Sexual Trauma related to the Catholic Church
The Unification church of Sun Myung Moon
Orthodox Judaism and abuse within Chabad Lubavitch
Sexual Abuse from Yoga Gurus

Sexual Trauma related to the Christian Evangelical and Pentecostal Church
Buddhists; Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings
Hinduism, Brahmanism and the abuse of gurus to students.
The Hare Krishna movement
Fellowship of friends
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky schools
Religious leaders- Pastors; Priests and nuns. We do not seek to judge, rather we seek to honor each person’s religious beliefs and experiences in the work we do.

We also work with the following diagnosis and traumatic effects that are often associated to religious trauma

Stockholm Syndrome or the experience of Torture

What is Stockholm Syndrome?

You are a survivor. A survivor of sexual assault and abuse. And yet, even though you’ve survived, the impacts of your sexual abuse can affect you for the rest of your life. Some of you have worked through the emotions that surrounded your sexual abuse, while others of you have been carrying around the pain for years.

We’ve seen the rise of child molestation cases coming out of Catholic and Evangelistic churches for many years and it’s hard to understand why so many of the victims have held on to their secret for so long…

Why didn’t they tell someone sooner?
Why would they allow their priest to molest them and get away with it?

Maybe these are the questions you ask yourself about your own abuse.

You were a child when your priest started touching you. At the age of three you were taught that touch is love, a hug from your father was what you yearned for when you were hurt. The kiss from your mom is what put you to sleep every night. You didn’t know that the touch of this man… the one that your family clearly respected… was the type of touch that would begin years of pain, hurt, and guilt.

At the age of nine you learned that what your priest was doing was wrong. You knew your priest shouldn’t do this to you, but he didn’t let you stop him. Maybe you tried telling someone, but he was your priest and you were just a child… of course they didn’t want to believe you. You realized your efforts to end the horror weren’t working, so you gave up trying. You felt powerless.

Your priest always found ways to get you alone. He promised that you were a good little girl and he wanted to show you that good girls got extra attention from their priest. Or that you were a bad boy and this was what God had in store for bad boys like you. It became a secret that you shared with your priest. He’d see you on Sundays with your family and not say a word, but tell you how nice you looked when you saw him the next day.

As the secrets grew between you and him, you began to feel a bond. We call this traumatic bonding or Stockholm Syndrome. Your priest had power over you and you felt helpless. The more isolated you felt from friends and family, the closer you felt towards your priest. To make it through such a traumatic experience you created a bond to survive. Being able to understand this traumatic bond can be difficult, as it’s hard to see why you’d attach yourself to someone that was causing you so much pain.

If you are a survivor of child molestation from a priest or minister and you look back at those horrific times with confusion, learning the factors of Stockholm Syndrome may help you make sense of what you were going through.

Factors that lead to Stockholm Syndrome:

1. You felt threatened:
Maybe this meant that the priest was manipulating your ideas about God. If you didn’t let
him do this to you then God would think that you were bad. He would tell you that if other
people found out they would say that you’re evil and that you’re going to hell. So you
allowed him to do what he wanted to in order to keep yourself safe.

2. Your priest showed you kindness:
Telling you that you looked pretty on Sunday, saying you’ll receive an extra blessing, or even him refraining from abusing you every so often while you were alone. These random acts of kindness would cause you to think that maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, it would change your perspective of him from evil child molester to an actual human being.

3. You were isolated from other people:
Your priest told you not to tell anyone, it had to stay your secret. No one believed you anyways so you kept to yourself and shut down emotionally. This created space between yourself and those around you so they wouldn’t find out. Maybe while you were being abused you felt like you were outside of your body. This was a way for you to disconnect from the abuse to protect yourself, but it also disconnected you from emotions in other aspects of your life as well.

4. You felt powerless:
You couldn’t escape the sexual abuse, you felt stuck and there was no way to get out. No one was going to believe you if you said something, there was nothing left to do but accept it. As you gave up trying to stop the abuse, your power slowly left you.

It’s important to remember that Stockholm Syndrome isn’t a conscious choice. Many times, people that fall victim to Stockholm Syndrome don’t even know that it’s happening. The bond that was created between you and your priest was simply a means of survival.

Just because you felt a traumatic bond doesn’t mean that you liked what was happening, or that it was your fault, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you need to feel shame. The important thing to remember is that you are a survivor and whether you’ve told anyone about what happened or not, you made it through. Now it’s time for healing.

We at Seattle Trauma Counseling are here to help you make sense of your traumatic experience and to release you from the pain. If you’d like more information about how we can help you, please reach out to us.

Dissociative Identity Disorder: (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) We have extensive knowledge, training and experience on how to work with this issue. We respect all systems and parts and do not seek to get rid of parts.

Complex Trauma: which is the result of both childhood trauma and adult PTSD

Sexual Trauma and/or Addictions to Sex, Pornography or Relationships

Cheating, Real or Emotional affairs.