About Our Approach
Finding Help for Religious Trauma
When searching for religious trauma help on the internet, you will find three main styles of help available:
Cult deprogramming
The term deprogramming was coined in the 1970s when the emergence of new religious movements peaked across the USA. Often guised as an intervention, deprogramming is the practice of convincing cult members to renounce their group’s ideology using whatever methods are deemed necessary. These methods aim at reversing cult mind control and ‘brainwashing’, but are often extreme and inhumane.
We believe that ‘deprogramming’ sends a condescending message to you as you seek recovery; that message being: “You are a poorly programmed robot. You are weak minded or foolish for joining this alternative religion. Let us ‘reprogram’ you to society’s form of conditioning.” The problem with the word cult is that it is too vague. The original definition of cult is: a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. This fits a lot of religions, new or old. The other problem with the word cult is that it implies that people who are a part of, or grew up in a religion are stupid or naive. This is a very problematic and prejudiced view of religion.
As British sociologist James Beckford has observed, “cults” are usually associated with beliefs and practices considered to be “unhealthy.” But what is seen as healthy in one culture may be seen as unhealthy in another. In fact, early Christianity could be called a “cult” because Christian beliefs and practices – such as not publicly worshipping the emperor – were considered strange and dangerous in ancient Rome.
As current trauma research shows, religious trauma does not disappear by merely ‘downloading’ a new set of information in the mind. This outdated approach is uninformed by the neuro-scientific studies of the effects of trauma and does not set you up for a successful, long lasting recovery.
Cognitive Behavioral /Atheistic based approach
Religion provides a sense of certainty that makes you feel safe. When you question or leave a religious system, however, you often feel the rise of existential anxiety. If you decide to leave that religion you may suddenly experience a lot of real uncertainty about your life. The truth, which you have architected your life on has collapsed beneath you. There is a vacuum where your truth used to be, and you might feel a sense of desperation to fill it. Any sense of certainty to replace this loss may seem welcome.
American helping professionals often espouse a cognitive /atheistic approach, claiming current cognitive behavioral science as the only way to solve this crisis. Many therapists and counselors really do not understand the unique qualities of religious trauma. Instead, they advise throwing out all religion and spirituality as a cure and trusting the ‘facts’. Sometimes people may not be ready for this; another all or nothing approach.
While this approach may seem objective, health care professionals often do not see their own subconscious biases. Unlike Asian cultures, American culture espouses dualism due to the influence of religious ideas upon which it was founded. Inevitably, this approach places you under a new dualistic authority- western psychology and science at the expense of any religious or spiritual practice. Once again, it is all or nothing, turn or burn, black or white. This approach does not acknowledge that as you journey to wellness, you may seek out a reformed or newly discovered spirituality that fits you.
Gnostic approach
This approach differs from the other two methods. Gnosis is a Greek word which refers to direct conscious knowing. Instead of external forms of ideology or simply replacing one set of rules for another, in this approach, you are your own authority. In this approach, You learn to trust own direct conscious experience. Understanding and working with your emotional regulation empowers you to know yourself. Then you know that you can let go of what part of your religion caused deep seated trauma while you discover your spirituality. You now hold the compass and the guiding map in hand as you navigate your sense of truth.
Gnosis may mystify or intimidate initially, since you have looked to sources outside of yourself to find the standards for how you should think or feel or act toward yourself or the world. You may feel some fear in this newfound freedom. However, conforming to certain standards or authorities has often caused confusion or led to your current trauma. In this approach our counselors give you the psychological tools to facilitate this transition into your own form of freedom, and we wish to collaborate with you as you discover this for yourself.
Religious Trauma is Attachment Trauma
How do you find a way to simply be okay with yourself and at peace in the world? How do we love and be loved? We all seek essential markers of well-being in ourselves and connecting with others, and many seek this out in a spiritual community. Unfortunately, when one has been raised in a religious community but it no longer brings peace or there is acute or chronic abuse, religious trauma syndrome can occur. This trauma may have arrested your psychological development. This can cause distortions to sense of self in ways that even can be hard for you to understand.
You might find yourself embattled with paralyzing self-hatred or disconnection from your body or lacking understanding of your basic emotional needs. This can extend to relationships- whether familial or intimate- and may cause you to seek intimacy with others while simultaneously rejecting affection and love. This collection of confusion and the inability to ‘talk oneself out of it’ clusters to form an alienated sense of ‘Being’ in the world, one that has damaging ramifications in many areas of life.
How do you find a way to simply be okay with yourself and at peace in the world? How do we love and be loved? We all seek essential markers of well-being in ourselves and connecting with others, and many seek this out in a spiritual community. Unfortunately, when one has been raised in a religious community but it no longer brings peace or there is acute or chronic abuse, religious trauma syndrome can occur. This trauma may have arrested your psychological development. This can cause distortions to sense of self in ways that even can be hard for you to understand.
Therapists are beginning to see parallels between religious trauma syndrome and its long term affects and how they overlap with developmental trauma. Developmental trauma occurs at a pre-verbal or early survival stage, usually as an infant or young child. When a core or basic need is not met, children internalize the failure of their caregiver and believe that everything is their fault. They do not understand that there is an environmental cause. This the dysregulation occurs at the pre cognitive level – before the child can rationally process what is happening. Tragically, this causes interruptions in nervous system regulation and distortions of identity, and the damage lasts long into adulthood.
While it may seem initially extreme to compare severe neglect resulting in maladaptive survival and connection trauma to religious trauma- especially when religion often takes a supportive role in peoples’ lives- take a moment and notice yourself. Does even considering your needs cause you to feel guilty or ashamed- ungrateful or as though you are sinning? Do you find yourself minimizing yourself out of fear of some retribution from a caregiver/or from God?
If children have caregivers who are attentive, they generally are joyful and naturally happy to be in the world. When you are a child in a tightly controlled religious environment, however, you are consistently told that you are actually not safe in the world and that the world is ‘not your home. Caregivers and secondary caregivers in the community consistently reinforce this message to you. You also are told that you are responsible for your separation from God and that your actions in the world have condemned to death an innocent man (this assumes a basic Judeo-Christian religious experience, although it usually can be applied broadly across many religious sects). Your environment, then, is considered an evil place and that you are evil in this world. As a child, your only tie to love is not an abstract form of God- your caregivers are your model of love and so they are how you experience God. If they consistently told you that your entire personhood should be separated from love and eternally damned to suffering forever unless you comply to the demanding needs of a God or show obedience in a community- your very existence as a Being is conditional upon these facts. Your emotional needs are downplayed as sinful or ungratitude and so – as a child living in a dangerous caregiver environment- you adapt or perish. Therefore, there is a diminished sense of self and well being. This stunts personal development and independence, since choosing to act differently from this set community results in shunning and a separation from your caregiver’s love- and ultimately, the source of all Love- what a child can perceive as God.
The need for restoring connection – and having security and peace- is fundamental to our experience as human beings. When this security has been threatened at a time before we had the cognitive ability to process, the threat to survival causes dysregulation all the way up the line. Whether this occurs at an early developmental stage or in a religious community, one’s sense of being in the world can be interrupted and cause dysregulation to your sense of Being in the world and whether you deserve to be and to live and to love and enjoy.
What is the Foundation of Mental Health?
Counselors at religious trauma counseling.com use the Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) as the foundation of what is positive mental health. It is an approach based upon the Attachment Trauma research of Dr. Laurence Heller and Dr. Aline La Pierre.
This model tells us that cross culturally a healthy individual has certain common traits that make the person function well in their life. We all need:
- Connection – the capacity to be in touch with our body and our emotions. As well the capacity to be in connection with others emotionally and recognize emotions as information rather than as sin.
- Attunement – the capacity to attune to our own needs and emotions without self hatred or shame. As well, the capacity to recognize, reach out for, and take in physical and emotional nourishment.
- Trust – the capacity for healthy dependence and the ability to recognize and participate in interdependence. As well, the ability to understand trust as a necessary element to experience intimate relationships. Intimacy = Trust and Honesty over time
- Autonomy – the capacity to set appropriate boundaries in order to recognize the feeling of safeness. the capacity to say NO and set limits. The capacity to observe ourselves in a non critical way without the need to constantly negatively evaluate what we are seeing in ourselves.
- Love–Sexuality – the Capacity to integrate vulnerability, trust and love with sexual experience. As well the capacity to live in emotional honesty and to trust oneself.
the Neuro Affective Relational Model suggests that all human beings have these 5 basic core needs and that they are essential to our physical and emotional well being. When one of these core needs is not met over time, predictable and physiological symptoms will result such as, stress, anxiety, the ability to self sooth or self regulate and our sense of self can become compromised.
Although it may seem that humans suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, most of these can be traced to early developmental and shock trauma that compromise the development of one or more of the 5 capacities.