What Is Religious Trauma?

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What Is Trauma?

Let’s start by talking about trauma, since it’s has now turned into a threadbare word that is being thrown around by almost anyone, to a point that it may have lost its meaning.

We all know that trauma is related to a negative experience. We also have this sense that not any negative experience turns into trauma. To explain better, imagine if two people were in car accidents while they were the driver. Let’s say, after a few days, the person A gets behind the wheel and manages to get back to driving without any difficulty. This person only remembers the accident as a memory that only comes up in relevant contexts. Now, let’s assume person B is totally unable to return to driving and the memory of the accident comes up to them in relevant or irrelevant contexts, and further more this person relives the whole sequence of events all over again, down to having the same (or even worse) emotional, cognitive and even physical reactions and sensations. Person B is experiencing trauma.

Trauma is memory of a negative experience that was not processed properly and so the individual keeps reliving it over and over again with intense reactions and symptoms. It often triggers the same survival reactions (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) that were used in the initial experience. Trauma can also assume itself in contexts that feel like the initial threat but may in fact not be a threat at all. Of course there is more to what trauma is, but for the sake of brevity let’s stop here.

Religious/Spiritual Trauma

Now that we know what trauma is, religious trauma can then be described as a cognitive, emotional, and physical distress resulting from an abusive, high-control, or authoritarian religious environment that is now affecting the person negatively the way any trauma would. People suffering from religious trauma may not be able to act and think independently and thus not feel whole, act with full agency, or they may have physical injuries that exacerbate their mental and emotional distress.

We should also acknowledge that when we talk about religion, we are not only talking about commonly known world religions, nor are we suggesting anyone who is religious is traumatized. Scholars and researchers consider religious trauma as something that could happen in any high-control and authoritarian coercive groups. In other words, while the religions may be practiced in such manner in some parts that cause trauma, the scope of religious trauma expands to cults, sects, and even some other secular social groups.

People who live with religious trauma report different types of experiences that can be considered trauma:

-            Cognitive/beliefs: fear of hell, fear of doom or apocalypse, being ostracised as evil/wicked, etc.

-            Exploitation: when the leader of the group acts as the High Power and is immune of criticism, judgement and is beyond the law. Abuse also can happen in forms of spiritual, emotional and sexual by the Leader and high-ranking members. Exploitation can also be in form of relinquishing individual’s money, agency, independence, and/or human and legal rights.

-            Physical trauma: when the group enforces certain gender identities and sexual orientations regardless of the individual’s actual sense of self, enforces body mutilation without consent, dictates nonconsensual sex, etc.

-            Community trauma: turning community members, family members and social support systems against those who leave or question the group, otherwise, making it a heavy price to pay to leave. Otherwise, when the group blocks people from leaving.

The list and categories can go on and be presented in different ways. Those who face religious trauma not only live with typical symptoms of trauma such as anxiety, flight/fight/freeze/fawn response, flashbacks, and hypervigilance (to be always on guard), they also experience symptoms such as identity confusion or identity crisis, spiritual dysregulation, and they may feel unable to make autonomous and independent decisions. Moreover, they may suffer socially if they are unable to form new support systems after leaving their groups, including finding jobs or education. This not only influences life at critical points; it also affects individual’s life on a daily basis.

My own experience

 I left Iran when I was 30 years old. I grew up in a religious Muslim family and in my teens and early twenties I was even practicing Islam. Why I left the religion and why some of it can be considered trauma is for another time. Nonetheless, leaving the religion and leaving the authoritarian regime of Iran were basically a double layer of religious trauma that I needed to be set free and heal from - A work that I started in my mid-twenties and still goes on.

If you need help with recovering from your religious trauma; if you need an empathetic person to listen to you with no judgment and some level of understanding; if you feel alone; do not hesitate to reach out to me. You will have someone who is accepting and understanding of what you went through and has a helping hand extended out to you.