Religious Trauma Syndrome

[rug]

Understanding Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Leaving Religion

Article 3 of 3 by Dr Marlene Winell

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith and faith community. It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). In the last article of this series, I explained some of the toxic aspects of authoritarian religions that cause long-term psychological damage (Bible-based ones in particular). In this writing, I will address the trauma of breaking away from this kind of religion.

With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was understood. It is a huge shock to the system, and one that needs to be recognized as trauma.

What it means to leave

Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion is understandably a liberating experience. People report huge relief and some excitement about their new possibilities. Certain problems are over, such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational religious doctrines, handling enormous cognitive dissonance in order to get by in the ‘real world’ as well, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. Finally leaving a restrictive religion can be a major personal accomplishment after trying to make it work and going through many cycles of guilt and confusion.

However, the challenges of leaving are daunting. For most people, the religious environment was a one-stop-shop for meeting all their major needs – social support, a coherent worldview, meaning and direction in life, structured activities, and emotional/spiritual satisfaction. Leaving the fold means multiple losses, including the loss of friends and family support at a crucial time of personal transition. Consequently, it is a very lonely ‘stressful life event’ – more so than others described on Axis IV in the DSM. For some people, depending on their personality and the details of their religious past, it may be possible to simply stop participating in religious services and activities and move on with life. But for many, leaving their religion means debilitating anxiety, depression, grief, and anger.

http://www.babcp.com/RTS/Article3.aspx

Sounds somewhat overstated to me.

[Igel]

1. Depends on the church.

I know a church that fits the description--members were screened, they were monitored and told what to do. They usually fervently believed in the doctrines and in the ability of the preachers to guide them. It was *the* church. The one and only.

The church had clubs. "Sunday school" for the kids, kids' choir, adult choirs, assorted social clubs and Bible studies. There were sports activities, a week-long annual retreat, summer camp for the kids, a winter "family camp". If you were a family in the church there'd be some church activity for at least one member each day. You could even have your vacations in the church, since the retreats and "family camps" were held in touristy areas.

That's the "draw." But the church taught the world was evil and depraved and to avoid being tainted with it. The result? Apart from colleagues at work--with a distance between you and them, obligatorily--your social life was the church.

Usually when people left it wasn't just a quick decision, saying, "Oh, gee, perhaps I'll become Catholic." As you developed doubts, there was stress and pressure from relatives and friends in the church. At some point the ministers get involved and would put pressure on you, finally finishing what you didn't--you'd be excommunicated and then all your friends and family members were expected to shun you.

After spending a decade or three alienating people around you outside of the church, you suddenly had nobody. The church you trusted kicked you in the groin. And something that you had built your life around--the church/faith complex--was gone.

One woman I knew went quite mad--she left the church, was divorced by her husband who got custody of her kids. Finally she became convinced that the pastor of her new church would have sex with her and conceive Jesus' reincarnation.

Most people I knew that left wound up bouncing from church to church. None were quite right for a long time.

In many cases it's not that traumatic. My SIL left the Catholic church with nary a problem. Then during the Episcopalian schism a few years ago she had a rough go of it. She liked her pastor, the church, had worked in it for years. She'd helped with fundraisers to repair it and upgrade the church, to help maintain programs. It was her refuge from years and years of chemotherapy for breast and bone cancer. Then, suddenly, found that she was being told exactly what she had to change her beliefs to. The congregation split, the priest went elsewhere and the life she had built for herself in her little "community" was shattered. It still wasn't all that dire, however.

Others that I've known church shopped. One woman decided she wanted to live with her boyfriend, it was against church doctrine, so she found a church that said it was okay. She attended a few times a year anyway, so it was no big deal.

People usually think that the pain of others in unfamiliar situations can't really be all that bad. Pain is personal and isn't subject to being evaluated by a third party's self-introspection-derived metric.

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2. Good post. Thanks.