Gimme Your Religious Trauma Q's!!
I'll ask the expert for you. :)
No, I’m not referring to me as the expert — I’m super excited that I’ve been asked to have a pretty big name in the religious trauma field on my pod! I love her work and she’s got a book coming out soon. She’s also a therapist and has a strong background in somatic therapy1 along with lots of expertise in religious trauma and abusive power and control dynamics.
So tell me: What do you want to learn more about? Here’s some ideas:
Specific psychological effects from high-control religion
How high-control religion mimics abusive relationships
Understanding somatic / body-based therapeutic work, especially in a context of high-control religion
Somatic-based ways to heal from religious trauma
Healing from religious trauma in general
Something else or some other flavor of what I’ve listed!
In other news, I’ve been oddly… happy? lately. You know, that feeling that you learn to not trust if you either have a trauma history or grew up in shame-based, high control religion (oh wait, I guess I’m being redundant 😅 — j/k all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares). I’ll also admit that the night after I wrote that sentence I was back to feeling a little crabby, but that almost-joy feeling was so good and refreshing to get back in touch wtih.
It feels like I’m marinating in some really great things, but I don’t yet have the thoughts / results of this marinating that feels ready to share. I feel okay with the waiting, though.
My oldest is having her 4th birthday, which has always been an age I’ve been really excited for my kids to be (because 4 year olds are pretty awesome, in my childcare experience). My youngest will be 2 in a few months. It feels like I’m emerging a tiny bit out of the woods of very young childrearing, and I can catch my breath and look around. I think that on how I felt a year ago, and how incredibly different I felt then. That’ll deserve a whole post on its own, but me last year would struggle to believe that I could feel how I currently do right now.
So for this week, we’ll chill together a bit, ponder some questions we want to know more about in regards to religious trauma, and do some marinating. Not sure where this marinating will go, but I hope we’re doing it together!
Chat with me in the comments! What topics do you want to learn more about, from a real expert in the field? What have you been marinating in lately? What has been bringing you hope or joy?
Somatic therapy is focused on the body and nervous system. “Somatic Experiencing” is a specific therapy modality with a very strong focus on the body. However, various kinds of therapy incorporate somatic work: including my own beloved EMDR, since there’s a lot of focus on the nervous system and attuning to the sensations of the body. Somatic work will always assume there’s more to the story than what our cognition and thoughts say, and that “the body holds the score,” as the renowned trauma book says!
Are there any maladaptive thoughts/patterns that tend to show up that are unique to religious trauma? Just curious, because I think there are some things that go so deep for me I am still not aware of them 😬 especially when it comes to gentle parenting.
I may be too late for your conversation, but I'd love to know any religious trauma-specific recommendations for finding or creating community outside of religion. I'm particularly thinking of the multigenerational family feel, especially since most of us end up at least somewhat distant from our families.