Religious Trauma
If you’ve been hurt within a religious community, you may be carrying more than just disappointment with a particular church, leader, or teaching.
Religious trauma often touches something deeper: how you understand God, how you understand yourself, and whether you can trust either one again.
In my experience this kind of harm usually comes down to power, or more specifically, the abuse of power by someone speaking on behalf of God.
There are two patterns I often see: the internalization of blame, where someone concludes that they themselves must be the problem, or a kind of exile, where someone pushes back against the teaching and ends up excluded or criticized by the community as a result.
Both responses come from trying to survive something that should never have happened in the first place.
I won't ask you to defend the community or leader who hurt you, and I also won't push you toward leaving your faith, returning to it, or replacing it with something else. Wherever you currently stand with God, spirituality, or religion, (even if that's “I have no idea anymore”), there's room for you here exactly as you are. My role is to help you process what happened to you, and to be a steady, honest presence while you figure out what's true for you now, while you navigate where you are with your faith.