Religious trauma results from an event, series of events, relationships, or circumstances within or connected to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
— Global Centre for Religious Research, 2023
There is no doubt that for millennia the various religions of the world have brought to their adherents many benefits, including a connectedness with a god or a spiritual being; the hope for an afterlife; the comfort that one can derive from engaging with a community; and a sense of an individual and unified purpose. These benefits are universally accepted as possible within the confines of a religious practice.
However, for many the practice of religion - or exiting from a religion, the process of apostasy - can be extremely traumatic. As most world religions tend to restrict their congregations to certain accepted practices and ways of life, those for whom these parameters force them to be excluded can experience negative evaluation by ministers, fellow congregants, and even family. Further, a growing number of the population in Europe and in the United States are now identifying as having no religion, those known on census forms as “nones.” Those no longer engaging in a religious practice can find that they are breaking generations of family and community tradition. This can be experienced as threatening.
As we begin to question our faith or our religious practice - or we are somehow expelled from the congregation as a result of a perceived non-adherence to expected values - we are impacted by this sense of exclusion, this loss, this grief, these accusations of betrayal of the family and community values. The resulting process of voluntarily exiting or being forced out can therefore be traumatic.
As someone for whom the practice of religion has informed a great many years of my life - both positively and negatively - I find myself now in a place of peace with the decisions I have made, as I, too, first questioned and then exited from that practice. I will help you understand and in your own way come to terms with your thoughts and feelings as you question the role of faith in your life, and the decisions you must then make.