The Effect of Religious Trauma on Mental Health (Religious Trauma Syndrome)

By: Bhaveeshika Charun 

What is Religious Trauma? 

Religious trauma is any trauma that takes place in a spiritual setting, often through psychological or emotional distress or emotionally manipulative practices. 

The cycle of religious abuse describes the continuous and unending belief systems of some religious groups, where a person is inherently guilty of sin and simultaneously reliant on religious leaders to access forgiveness. 

This kind of trauma is characterised by prolonged, continuous exposure to traumatic events. RTS often manifests over a long period. Religious trauma can be intimately connected and share many similarities with the development of post-traumatic stress disorder and complex PTSD or c-PTSD (Nygaard, 2024). 

Signs & Symptoms 

● Compulsive perfectionism 

● Faith crisis or becoming disillusioned with spirituality 

● Self-hatred, low self-esteem, or compromised self-worth 

● Constant feelings of shame or guilt 

● Hypervigilance 

● A distinct lack of boundaries between personal life and religious communities ● Identity confusion, especially among women, LGBTQIA+, and religious minority members 

● Sexual health and sexual dysfunction, either through making sex or thoughts of sex taboo or through lack of education about healthy sexual practices. 

● Manifestation of other mental illnesses, such as anxiety disorder, depression, or eating disorders (Nygaard, 2024). 

Causes 

● Using guilt and shame to control behaviour 

● Strict gender roles 

● Fear-based teaching 

● Excommunication and shunning 

● Repression of critical thinking 

● Physical, emotional, sexual, or financial abuse (Nygaard, 2024). 

Examples of Religious Trauma

● Being forced to be intimate with someone in a religious setting or feeling pressured to remain in an unhealthy or abusive relationship by using one’s faith against them ● Feeling ashamed of personal identity, such as actively being shamed for expressing LGBTQ+ ideas or other aspects of a person’s identity 

● Using scripture or religious beliefs to manipulate, pressure, or otherwise actively control a person’s decisions or behaviours 

● Instilling an innate feeling of guilt, shame, or fear of damnation and punishment from divine sources 

● Being compelled to act only in the interest of the faith or religious figurehead, even at the expense of personal needs or those outside of the faith (Nygaard, 2024). 

Religious Trauma vs. Spiritual Abuse 

These experiences are closely related, but they are distinct. 

● Spiritual abuse is an interpersonal experience between 2 people. The abuser may often be a religious leader attempting to manipulate someone lower in the religious hierarchy, a parent using religion to abuse a child, or a spouse drawing on religious doctrine to control their partner. 

● Religious trauma is a systematic experience between a person and his religion as a whole. Often the trauma is not linked to one specific person but to a series of people over time who enforce a traumatising message (Baer, 2024). 

Religious Trauma in Childhood 

Childhood trauma from church may instil a self-deprecating or guilty state of mind since childhood. It may also not include emotional and physical abuse only, but also sexual abuse. 

Religious trauma can profoundly affect the development of children in many areas, including: 

● Delayed social skills 

● Harmed emotional awareness 

● Compromised sexual education 

● Damaged self-worth (Nygaard, 2024). 

Religious Trauma Therapy 

Combining effective support groups with proven practices is necessary. Some of the methods to begin processing and overcoming the effects of religious trauma include: ● Trauma-informed treatment 

● Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) 

● Dialectal behavior therapy 

● Eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) 

● Support to explore new outlets and ideas surrounding self-care practices and routines (Nygaard, 2024).

● Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) 

● Prolonged exposure therapy 

● Radically open dialectical behaviour therapy (RO-DBT) ● Somatic therapy 

● Faith-based therapy (Baer, 2024).

References: 

1. Auna Nygaard. (12 April 2024) “Religious Trauma | 9+ Signs of Spiritual Abuse and How to Heal” Sandstone Care 

https://www.sandstonecare.com/blog/religious-trauma/#:~:text=Religious%20traum a%20has%20lasting%20effects,guilt%2C%20and%20low%20self%2Dworth 

2. Brooks Baer. (16 May 2024) “Religious Trauma: Signs, symptoms, causes, and treatment” Therapist.com 

https://therapist.com/trauma/religious-trauma/