Religious Trauma

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A crisis of faith, or leaving a system of belief, can be very destabilizing.  Especially when community and career are centered around agreeing with beliefs internally you've not had for a long time.  

When the connection has been good, it can feel like a huge loss.  Loss of role, loss of income, loss of community help, and tradition.  

Leaving the harmful authoritative system can feel relieving, but it can also carry with it its own stress.  It's like starting over.  It can take a long time to reflect on the ways these systems of thought have infiltrated your sense of yourself and your spirituality.  

When you've built your life around something that's no longer there, it can shake the foundations of what you thought you knew.  Suddenly, questions you believed were settled rise to the surface. 

When life feels like it has lost its meaning, it can be an invitation to turn inward.  To explore, reflect, and begin discovering something deeper and more whole within yourself. 

Simultaneously, it is also an invitation to turn outward.  To connect with something larger than you, that helps you make sense of the world and your existence, in a way that resonates with your beliefs, uncanny experiences, and intuitive sense.

Religious trauma can leave deep emotional and spiritual scars, creating shame, confusion, and a painful disconnection from your authentic self.

Religious trauma can feel like a wound to the soul.  A fracture between who you were told to be, and who you really are.

When the religion has been toxic or abusive, healing can be even more complicated.  Sometimes personal spirituality is so caught up in the control of the abusive religion, it can be hard or even impossible to distinguish between the two.  

In Depth therapy, healing begins as we turn inward to listen to parts of self that were silenced or exiled in the name of faith or belonging.  

Through dreamwork and gentle exploration of the unconscious, religious trauma therapy can help you reclaim your inner voice, and restore a living connection to the sacred within.

Depth therapy helps you to transform your pain into wisdom, self-trust, and spirituality that feels true to you.

Each person carries within them the capacity to grow, heal, and become more fully themselves.  Sometimes that unfolding takes us down unexpected paths, paths we never imagined we'd go, yet somehow feel truer to who we are becoming.

For many years I taught at a Christian university, and though I no longer participate in organized religion, I continue to hold a deep respect for the importance of personal spirituality and meaning-making in people's lives.

Many of the people I work with have outgrown the religious traditions they were raised in, or have stepped away from communities that once felt nurturing but later became restrictive or toxic.  Yet their longing for meaning, connection, and spiritual depth remains.  Just in a new form.

In our work together, I honor that longing.  I welcome those who wish to explore the spiritual dimension of life in ways that feel authentic and life-giving, whether within or beyond traditional frameworks.