Religious trauma occurs when someone encounters some type of traumatic or stressful religious experience(s). The term “religious trauma” can sometimes be vague or confusing, and I often prefer to think of it as a distinct form of relational trauma (with existential elements) because it isn’t necessarily the religion itself that causes the trauma, but the interpersonal dynamics involved in the way in which a group of people engages with a particular religion that can have deleterious outcomes. This is most often experienced in religious setting where power and control dynamics are at play. Religious spaces that use indoctrination as a way of creating a sense of “belonging” set people up for a host of psychic and interpersonal conflicts that can overwhelm the ego’s ability to cope.
People experiencing the effects of a religious trauma can often feel bewildered by the intensity of their symptoms and reactions. There is often a sense that they shouldn’t be so impacted by it and there aren’t many widely held frameworks for helping people understand why this is so incredibly disruptive to their mental, emotional, and even physical well-being.
In the 1930s, psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi was writing about trauma and what he found were the elements that made certain experiences the most traumatic for his patients. What he found was that it was “traumatic aloneness” that truly “rendered an attack traumatic.” What I believe he means by this is that an event feels most traumatic when there is the absence of a trusted, caring figure to support the person in the aftermath.
In my work, I have found that people are not often heard or validated when they discuss emotional or psychological injuries they are experiencing within their faith communities. Religious groups that operate primarily within the bounds of indoctrination, by nature, do not leave much room for questioning/dissent/criticism of leadership/etc. This lends conversations about damaging experiences within the group to be rife with gaslighting, minimizing, denying, and blame shifting. In these cases, people often become confused by the denial and hypocrisy of the offender. Out of fear, they may identify with the offender’s denial. However, they remain aware of how this denial contradicts their own experience of the event and, as a result, they end up doubting their own perceptions. This results in a sort of “traumatic confusion,” where what is real becomes difficult to discern. This, combined with the denial of the person’s suffering leads to the “traumatic aloneness” that makes these experiences so acutely damaging.
Given enough of these experiences, some people may find themselves considering the idea of leaving their church/religious group or faith altogether. And here, we find additional layers of traumatic aloneness threaten the psyche. The process of leaving a church or religious group almost invariably results in the loss of relationships that were once vital in a person’s support structure. Any person who has left a church is keenly aware of the loss they are facing. For some people, this is their primary form of community and they find themselves feeling painfully alone in the world after leaving the group.
But I think there is also an element of “traumatic existential aloneness” that is critical to understanding the impact of religious trauma. Many people think about God as a being who is with them all the time, looking out for them and offering unconditional love. Religion also offers people a structure with which to think about death and the after-life (i.e. where will they go, who will be there with them, and how pleasant/unpleasant it will be). Questions about whether God is real or whether there is an after-life can induce feelings of existential aloneness (i.e. I really am alone in this world. No one is looking after me—not even God. I have no one to turn to.) and fears about where they will spend eternity, if there is one. When one leaves a religion, they aren’t just facing the traumatic aloneness in losing their support structure and sense of community after having endured abusive experiences within the group, they are also facing the traumatic aloneness of eternity without their loved ones or their benevolent God.
For all of these reasons, I wonder, “how could we *not* expect people to be showing signs of intense emotional and psychological distress in the wake of religious trauma?” The impacts of this phenomenon cannot be understated.
Source: https://www.alsf-chile.org/Indepsi/Articulos/Trauma-Abuso/Ferenczis-Trauma-Theory.pdf