Brad speaks with Dr. Laura Anderson, founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery and co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute. They discuss the nature of religious trauma, why it can be hard for individuals to label it trauma, and how it can be treated.
One of the issues for victims of religious trauma is the absence of a clear cut "before" and "after" that indicates when and how the traumatic event happened.
Their discussion addresses the specific contours of high demands on sexual purity within religious frameworks and the traumatic effects this can have years and even decades after one leaves the community.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy Axis Mundy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
What's up, y'all?
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
I have a wonderful guest, somebody who I have gotten to know over the last year, but is an amazing human being, and that is Dr. Laura Anderson.
So Laura, thanks for joining me today.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
So I usually do before I welcome the guests so that everybody knows, but I need to take a breath to talk about all the stuff you're doing.
So I welcomed you and now we're going to just go down the list of all the amazing things you're doing.
So you recently received your doctorate.
You are Dr. Laura Anderson.
You're a practicing psychotherapist who are the co-founder of the Religious Trauma Institute, which is just an amazing center for scholars and practitioners and therapists and other folks who are working in the area of religious trauma.
You are an author.
You've written a handbook and a guide for doing important work as it comes to dealing with various forms of trauma, especially religious trauma.
And you are the founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
So my first question is, how many hours of sleep do you do a night?
Like two or three?
Or like it just sounds like you're doing everything.
This is crazy.
So yeah.
So when I think of folks who are working on religious trauma, you're the first person I think of.
And so this is something that I think some folks will be familiar with.
But I think for others, this is kind of a new concept.
The idea of a religion of religious trauma in a vein that is comparable to PTSD.
I know you don't like the phrase religious trauma syndrome.
It's too broad and maybe too general.
But I'm just wondering, with all that in mind, if I say, what is religious trauma?
What is the kind of two minute explainer for that?
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
Always the perfect place to start.
Because I think in order to understand religious trauma, we have to understand trauma first.
And so my little quippy, what is trauma, is trauma is not the thing that happened to you, but rather our body or our nervous system's response to the thing that happened to us.
And so then religion or religion becomes an adjective to help us better describe the context in which the trauma occurred.
It would be similar to sexualized trauma, developmental trauma, trauma from war, just really helps us understand.
Kind of some different components that we might be dealing with, but in terms of how religious trauma impacts us, we're going to be looking at the trauma piece, and that is relatively the same regardless of what kind of the transpiring events or environments or situations were.
So you recently started the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
How did your approach as a therapist to being a trauma-informed professional and then also somebody focused on religious trauma, how did that go into sort of the mission of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery?
Yeah, I feel like there's the long answer.
I'll try to give the shortest one, but ultimately this Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery was born because I had a really, really long waiting list, like about four years of people that were wanting to work with me specifically because of religious trauma.
They often found out about me because of my work with the Religious Trauma Institute, but Brian Pack, who is the co-founder with me, we both run our own practices.
And so we both have tons of clients, and just as a result of us getting our names out there, We both see an immense interest in being able to work on religious trauma, but I personally was at my max.
Like you asked, how many hours of sleep do I get?
I wanted to continue to have the option of sleeping.
So that's why I was like, I've got to do something different.
Starting a larger practice, especially online, had been something that was of interest to me.
And with the pandemic happening and everything naturally moving to an online format, and people being able to see that you could still do really quality mental health work on an online format, it felt like the perfect time.
I had access to some amazing practitioners that I knew were interested in doing the same type of work, but I was able to kind of set up the business piece of it and the management side.
And so that's what became the Center for Trauma Resolution Recovery.
And we really look at trauma while we focus.
I mean, trauma is kind of our jam, but religious trauma is what most of us specialize in.
And we all just had a very strong recognition of how This could impact people how, yeah, living in their, in their daily lives and just there was a lack of support.
I think we've seen since the 2016 election in particular, a lot more people that are coming out of these religions and there's just not a lot of resources or a lot of professional understanding of religious trauma.
And so it felt important to kind of have some sort of a hub for people to be able to come to, to find support.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire SWADGE archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
