Looking Back, I Can See the First Signs of Religious Trauma. I Just Didn’t Know What Was Happening.

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When I was in middle school, my family and I started attending a Seventh-day Adventist church. Before this, I didn’t consider myself very religious. My family and I would go to church on occasion when I was in elementary school, and in fifth grade (the last year of elementary school for me), we began regularly attending a Baptist church. But I never felt compelled to dive deep into religion while we were there.

After we stopped going to that church, we soon started attending an Adventist church. It was there that I started diving deep into Christianity, taking religious teachings seriously and reading my Bible regularly. And it was then that I started developing symptoms of religious trauma. I just didn’t know what was happening at the time, so I didn’t try to stop it.

I will say, though, that in journal entries I wrote around this time, I talk about a sense of drifting away from myself. I think my intuition was trying to tell me something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to listen to it or interpret its messages. Plus, in my experience I found that religion didn’t really emphasize introspection or listening to one’s own inner wisdom. While I believe I was still listening to it before I became religious, I think religion led me to forget how to listen to my inner voice.

Religious Trauma Begins

Based on my experiences with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, they tend to take a very literal interpretation of Scripture. This includes the return of Jesus Christ. I have to say, while some people may find great comfort in the idea of him returning and returning soon, I found the idea terrifying.

Since I didn’t know when it would be, I don’t know if I ever felt that I was truly ready. I remember that when I first began to feel the weight of this idea that he was “coming soon,” the world started to look very gray.

But looking back, the first time I notice that religious trauma was beginning to affect me was with religious scrupulosity or religious OCD. This is a form of OCD where obsessions and compulsions are related to a desire to please or appease your Higher Power, and they stem from a fear of judgment or punishment.

I used to enjoy Harry Potter. I believe I read the first four books and saw the first two movies. But then, likely because of the Bible’s views on things like sorcery, I felt I couldn’t continue to enjoy the series and still be a good Christian.

It’s not that anyone told me I wasn’t allowed to read the books, watch the movies, or engage with the series in other ways. But my mind convinced me I should give it up. And so, I did.

This set a very dangerous precedent. It was the beginning of me taking the voice in my head too seriously. And although I never did this, I know that if I explained to any religious person what was happening, they might not have seen anything wrong with me making a change like this. They might have even applauded me and seen the change as me trying to be more spiritual or pure. But it was really me trying to appease God in some way, and it was coming from a place of fear.

Over time, I developed more symptoms like a worsening of the scrupulosity and other forms of OCD. I struggled to know whether I was being “good enough” or whether I was doing the “right thing.” But I just thought that if I did what the voice in my head was telling me, I would be ok. Even if it meant not taking steps to really move my life forward because I was waiting for God to reveal the plan to me, I was willing to listen. This meant that for a long time, I was taking a passive approach to life.

My Spiritual Awakening

It took a major disappointment that occurred in 2017 for me to finally start to examine my religious beliefs. And it’s only now, after leaving Christianity, that I’m really starting to understand how much of an effect religious teachings were having on my mind.

I didn’t learn about religious trauma until recently, as a result of reading the book When Religion Hurts You by Laura E. Anderson, PhD. I didn’t know that people in stressful religious settings could develop symptoms like those who experience other forms of trauma.

And what can be especially difficult is that religious trauma can take the form of complex PTSD or CPTSD, meaning the people affected are responding to a long-term situation as opposed to a specific event. I learned about this from the book, too. Recovering from CPTSD can present unique challenges because the people involved don’t have a specific start and end point to the traumatic event. They were just living in a state of chronic stress.

For me, the idea of Jesus returning soon put me into a state of chronic stress because I never knew when his return would be. Would I be ready? That alone took a toll on my mind, along with other religious teachings, which allowed things like religious OCD to become such a constant presence in my life.

How I See Things Now

Now I no longer consider myself a Christian. I consider myself spiritual, not religious. I no longer take the Bible’s teachings so literally either, including teachings about the return of Jesus. And now I don’t see my Higher Power as judging. So, I don’t believe it was my Higher Power asking me to give anything up. It was my mind the entire time.

This has definitely helped to ease my religious scrupulosity, although I do still have some symptoms. But I also know I’ve come a long way from where I was when I was struggling to regain my spiritual bearings after what I consider to be my spiritual awakening. I also understand that full recovery takes time. And I’ve learned to have patience and to be compassionate with myself as I heal.

What’s painful for me to think about is how I had a beautiful relationship with my Higher Power before I began getting serious about religion. But religion actually distorted my view of that Power. When I was younger, I didn’t think I had to do anything specific to please or appease God. I thought just being me was enough.

But all of a sudden, religion was teaching me that just being me wasn’t enough. Now I had to perform rituals and believe certain things and avoid certain things to prove my faith and avoid punishment. And because of the nature of my brain, which can be very perfectionistic, I never knew if I was doing enough or being good enough according to the standards I was presented with. And it didn’t help that my brain would take the rules I was given and add rules to them that I then felt compelled to follow.

To be frank, I find all of this messed up. Religion took something simple and beautiful and made it complicated. I’m aware that not everyone has this experience with religion. Some people can even find great solace with it. But for me, it caused severe mental health challenges and led me to fear the Higher Power I once loved without fear.

Undoing all this damage is a process. But it pains me to think about how people may not even recognize the harm they’re causing to others by teaching them certain things in a religious setting.

Final Thoughts

Religious trauma is a real thing. It can affect people in ways similar to other forms of trauma. But religious trauma can be especially difficult to notice because people often think of religion as the place people go to find comfort, peace, and solace. To think that religion itself could be the cause of people’s mental health issues or other challenges may seem unfathomable to some.

Even so, if you are dealing with any trauma-like symptoms as a result of religion, please know that you’re not making these things up and you’re not alone. Religious teachings and behavior resulting from those teachings can affect people in ways that lead to these kinds of symptoms.

But I would suggest that, if you notice these things in yourself, you might want to look at how your religious environment and the religious teachings you’ve learned are affecting you or have affected you. And if you need to, don’t be afraid to change your environment and/or seek professional help.

~ Ashley C.

P.S. As I said, going from religious to spiritual and learning to see my Higher Power in a new way have helped a lot when it comes to religious OCD. These changes have allowed me to start practicing a form of spirituality that feels more authentic to me because it’s based on my personal values, my sense of morality, and my experiences of my Higher Power.

If you’re a Christian who would like to practice a form of spirituality that isn’t weighed down by religious dogma and that feels more authentic to you, I offer spiritual coaching services you might be interested in. Simply click here to learn more.

But please know that coaching isn’t a replacement for professional counseling or therapy. If you’re in need of either of these services, please see a qualified professional.