Healing Religious Trauma: Begin With Awareness

Healing from religious trauma begins with recognizing its impact. In this video, Alyson offers gentle questions to help you notice where religious experiences may have shaped how you feel, relate, and see yourself - and explores how a safe therapeutic relationship can support healing.

Transcript

Healing religious trauma is a journey. It takes time, Support. And compassion. And the first step on your journey is to bring more awareness to how your religious experiences and beliefs have impacted you. Religion that traumatizes is constricting and restrictive. Limiting the range of what you can feel, Think, Be and do, Much as if you were a beautiful flowering plant that had been put in a pot that's too small. It restricts your growth. Religion can affect even who we love. Or who we're able to acknowledge that we love. As well as the love we have for ourselves. It really can affect our relationship with ourselves over time. Such that we don't trust ourselves or our internal experiences. It leads to a lot of self-criticism and perfectionism and sometimes self-hate. So as you listen. To this, You can start noticing what are you reacting to, What sounds familiar. And I have some questions that you can consider today. You can jot them down and journal about them or meditate on them, Take them to therapy. The first is, Where do you make yourself small? What feelings are hard for you to tolerate? What do you shame, Blame, Or judge yourself for? What do you feel guilty about? In your relationships, What's hard? It might be conflict. Or communication. Voicing your needs and wants. So this work of self-awareness you can do on your own, But to really work on your healing, It is important to have a relationship with a therapist you feel safe with. There are several reasons for this. Religion harms by using a lot of fear and threat. And so we need safety to approach. Understanding the impact and working on the impact. We also want to build safety with ourselves, But that can be hard with religious trauma. Because we're often taught not to trust ourselves. Not to trust the feelings and thoughts that we have. And like I said earlier, It can even lead to really not liking yourself or hating yourself. So it's hard to be safe with yourself sometimes initially. And having a therapist who provides that safety helps, Over time, Internalize the sense of well-being inside that we're going for. Another reason being in therapy is very helpful is you have some objective eyes. To see the impact. Religious trauma generally happens over a period of time. Unlike other forms of trauma that can happen with a specific incident. Religious trauma typically happens over a period of years, So we often don't fully even understand. The impact it's had on us, But a therapist will help us see that. And then the last reason is exploring and healing religious trauma stirs lots of feelings. Many of which we're not equipped to have or we're not. Are custom to have. As well as backlash, Where you feel guilt or shame for even feeling a certain thing or remembering a certain incident. And having a safe space to process that backlash, Which is inevitable, Is very helpful. So give yourself lots of time with this and compassion. And thank you for being here with me today.

Reviews

Another great and so very helpful video on religious trauma generally and on the benefits of a good and regular therapy practice more specifically. Such an affirming presence you have, Dr. Stone. I’m very grateful for this much-needed content on Insight Timer and am SO looking forward to your next videos! Thank you again.