It's In the Code Ep. 39: Understanding Religious Trauma Part II
“Interview with Dr. Laura Anderson: Understanding Trauma”
Many of the themes and topics we explore in “It’s In the Code” figure prominently in the experience of those who have been traumatized by participation in high-control religious environments. But what is “trauma”? How is it possible that something as widespread and seemingly mundane as participation in very mainstream American religious communities can be “traumatizing”? Dan finds the answers to these and other questions in this interview with Dr. Laura Anderson, founder and head of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, which specializing in working with those processing religious trauma.
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Hello and welcome to the series It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And today, again, doing something a little bit different than our norm.
Last episode, if people haven't had a chance to check it out, I would invite you to go and do so.
But I'm interviewing Dr. Laura Anderson, the founder and director of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
This is the second of kind of a two-part Set of interviews.
Again, a little bit of context for this.
I do this work in, it's in the code, quote unquote, decoding a lot of religious language and experience that folks have.
And it really mirrors something I did as a practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, working with the effects of sort of this kind of coded religious language.
I hear from a lot of folks about this and it can have a relation to trauma.
I hear from people who have been traumatized by religion.
This is why they want to talk about the things they want to talk about.
I hear about from people who sometimes say that, you know, it was hard to hear an episode because it turns out that something really struck a nerve with them.
And so it occurred to me that it would be good to spend some time talking with Laura about what trauma is and how it relates to religion and so forth.
First of all, welcome, Laura Anderson.
Thank you for joining us again.
Yes.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah.
And so last episode, again, I invite people to do this.
It went through sort of some nuts and bolts of like what trauma is, how it lives in the body, what it feels like, why we should talk about what it feels rather than what we think in some ways.
But we reference a lot about religious trauma, and what I wanted to do in this episode is sort of turn that direction and say, okay, so what is religious trauma?
In what ways is it just a form of trauma?
What are some unique factors about it?
And so forth.
And so let me just throw it out to you because this is really the kind of niche that you have, I think, found and filled kind of a gap of trauma that's related specifically to religion, religious experiences, religious background.
We talked a little bit last time about how trauma can be about a really traumatic singular event.
The clients I work with as a practitioner, I imagine most of the clients you work with, that's not what has happened to them with religion.
It's that complex trauma over a long period of time.
So when you're sitting around, you know, you get invited to the cookout.
We always talk about our cookouts with Uncle Ron on the podcast.
And you're sitting around, someone's like, so what do you do?
And you say, I'm a therapist and a coach.
And oh, cool.
What do you do?
I work with people overcoming religious trauma.
If they don't just walk away, then they're like, I'm not touching that.
And they say, what does that mean?
What is religious trauma?
What is your cookout answer to, I'm a religious trauma therapist, or I'm a religious trauma coach, and what that is?
Tell us more about that.
Yeah, I have many Uncle Rons that I'm aware of, so I can really resonate with that.
And being in the South, it still is very taboo, you know, because I always say the first question people ask you after, what's your name, is where do you go to church?
Um, so in terms of religious trauma, I think it's important to understand that academically speaking, like in the field of psychology, religion has traditionally been thought of as what we call a pro-social or supportive factor.
And simply what that means is that people look at religion and say, we get a lot of worth and value out of this.
There's connection, there's community.
This is a sense of support.
And I don't disagree.
I think a lot of people do find a sense of support and connection, even identity within religion.
But what we've talked less about in academic and psychological fields, like even in our offices, is that religion isn't always that pro-social and supportive factor.
Now, on top of that, we've also really only hear kind of the most extreme cases about harm that churches or religions or specific religious leaders have participated in.
So this could be things like clergy sexual abuse.
It could be really Really kind of awful or disgusting, like sacrificial practices or, you know, things with children who clearly do not have, like, are able to ask for consent.
And so we do hear about these extreme cases of things like spiritual and religious abuse.
And so that's the question I get the most is like, oh, you're a religious trauma therapist, so you work with people who have been sexually abused by members of the clergy.
And yes-ish, I have.
But primarily, similar to what you were saying there, Dan, is that I work with clients who have come out of what I have called high-control religions, religions that place a lot of control over how people live, think, act, relate, and have to create an identity out of specific religion, dogma, beliefs, rules, these sorts of things.
We're just starting to like touch some of that research that's recognizing that, hey, you've grown up in environments or spent time in environments like this.
It can live in your body the same way that trauma from other experiences can live in your body.
The last time we spoke, we talked about single incident versus complex trauma.
I believe religious trauma fits more into that complex category.
Now, of course, we can have the single events, but in the complexity, we go, there was, it was long.
It was over time.
Oftentimes it was inescapable for those of us who are children growing up in this.
We couldn't run.
We couldn't get away.
We couldn't fight back.
So there's all of these things that we just have to kind of deal with it, learn how to cope in the moment.
And that produces Or can produce or result in trauma that lives in us as adults.
So when I use the word religious trauma, religion is the is the adjective that helps us better understand like the context for where these things happened, similar to how we might say things like trauma from war or, you know, sexual trauma.
So That it doesn't necessarily mean there's a different protocol for like resolving how that trauma lives in the body, but that does clue us in to knowing some different things that we may need to target.
For instance, somebody who grows up in a high control religion may not have to work through, say, car backfire, like somebody who was a soldier in war.
That's part of the recovery piece.
And so we look and we go, there's some different recovery things that happen.
Just like a soldier from war may not walk into, you know, Hobby Lobby and get the heebie-jeebies because they're playing, you know, worship music.
Now, maybe they do, but maybe they do get the heebie-jeebies for other reasons, but it may not be connected to that.
Yeah.
It's like, sorry.
So I say that to say the word religion just helps us fill out a little bit more of what we may need to be targeting during trauma therapy.
I find this, this notion you have of high control religious environments.
I don't know if I had really thought about.
Religion or ways of sort of classifying religion or thinking about different kinds of religious contexts in that way until I sort of became familiar with you and your work and some of what you do.
And I find it really, really useful to think about that.
And I often bring it up with students.
We were discussing before the interview that I often have students who will say, you know, they'll talk about quote-unquote cults or something.
And I, you know, my PhD is in religious studies.
I'm like, it's not really how we talk about religion and religious studies anymore.
Oftentimes, the difference between a cult and a quote-unquote mainstream religion is just kind of social acceptability.
But I think a more fruitful way of thinking about it is that high control sort of piece.
And so I find that really useful in a way of thinking about it.
I often describe it to students as almost like a sliding scale or like, if you had like a mixing board, like a volume meter or something, and you could turn it up or down, that that's an interesting way of thinking about that.
Kind of related to that, if we want to jump off of that, you talk about these unique elements of religious trauma.
And again, imagine Uncle Ron right at the cookout saying, well, you just hate religion.
You're just anti-religious.
And I know if people go to the Center for Trauma Resolution Recovery and the frequently asked questions, there's a thing about like, are you anti-religious?
When I was going through the process of working to become a practitioner, we had to talk about if I was anti-religious, Are you anti-religious?
Is religion bad?
Is religion inherently traumatic?
I suspect your answer will be no.
But how does that relate to this notion of, say, high-control religious environments for different kinds of experiences or articulations of religion, if that makes any sense?
And if not, I'm happy to clarify.
Yeah, you are correct.
My answer is no, I am not anti-religion.
I feel like that can quickly move into fundamentalist territory the same way that many religions are.
So when we talk about fundamentalism and this gets into that notion of high control, fundamentalism is reflected in patterns of thinking and relating.
There's prescriptions and specific things that you must do or say or act to be considered right or good or in or connected.
And so I think if we say, for me at least, when people go, are you anti-religion?
I say no, because I believe that if we can quickly turn into fundamentalism just on the other side with no belief or more of an atheistic kind of framework.
And I don't particularly find that to be helpful either.
I'm a big believer that it is not my job to be responsible for what anybody else believes and how they think of a higher power if they want to go to church or believe in God or not.
That's not for me to decide.
I am anti-harm.
I'm anti-power and control.
I'm anti-abuse.
I'm anti-oppression.
I'm anti-racism.
I'm anti all of these other things.
So if you can find a religion that doesn't have all of that, I'm like, go for it.
Why not?
If this really is a pro-social thing, but when we start to look at the harm and control that it can cause, that's where I would say there's room to pause.
You know, and we talked a little bit here and there about kind of research around religion and cults and these sorts of things.
And really, until the last five to ten years, the people that were the loudest in the kind of religious trauma field, which really wasn't a field, but people that were talking about it, Really, we're kind of touting the message that that religion is inherently harmful.
You will have mental health issues as a result of this.
And one of the quote unquote cures for religious trauma is that you become an atheist.
You just reject all of this stuff, kind of believe nothing or something different or whatever, and then you'll be good.
Well, of course, we know that that's not how trauma works and, you know, all of these other things.
But I think that was You know, that's just a colloquial understanding of like, just think differently.
Just stop going to church.
Just don't believe this stuff anymore.
And we know that that's not, it's not as easy as that.
And I think that's really, really important, you know, to know that it's a complexity thing.
Yeah, unfortunately or fortunately, I guess from anyone's perspective, like that's the theme of this interview and last one is really complexity, this ongoing complexity.
You know, I was I was thinking about this that, you know, people will ask me and I'll throw it to you in a second of like, is there anything unique about religious trauma?
And in many ways, as you say, it's a trauma is this this physiological response that can be caused by lots of different things.
So there's a lot of formal similarities.
This isn't unique to religion.
There are other domains of life that are like this.
But one of the things that I really emphasize to people is that religion is not just about trying to develop patterns of acting and thinking and getting you to believe and do certain things.
You're supposed to feel certain things.
It's about how you are supposed to feel toward not just God, but other people or other kinds of people.
It's often about In these high-control religious environments you describe, it's about who you can love and who you can't, and to whom you should feel sexual attraction, and to whom you shouldn't, and so forth.
For me, it's a recipe for a kind of trauma response of, as we talked about last time, these ongoing effects that become embodied because As you say, when somebody said, well, just stop going to church, stop believing that, whatever.
The clients I work with have all done that already.
That's why they're talking to me.
I quit doing that.
I don't go to that kind of church.
I don't believe that, whatever.
But I still feel these things that I felt.
And for me, when people say, you know, is there anything unique about religious trauma?
I was like, I don't know that's absolutely unique.
But it is something that maybe heightens it or something is that I think the more high control religious context is, the more it's about directing not just what we should think or believe, how we should feel and actually shaping us into people who feel what we're supposed to quote unquote feel.
Is there anything to that?
Am I on the right track with that or am I just like, you know, a crazy academic spinning out theories?
No, I mean, I've had people ask me that question before of like, what is the difference between religion or high control religion and like a sorority or a fraternity?
We're just, it's an identity, we do these things, we chant these songs, we dress this way or whatever.
And I would say, yeah, like there's, there's, as humans, right, we, We are drawn to things like that, that promote a sense of community and connection.
It's why, you know, sports, you know, like football stadiums are filled with people dressed the same and cheering and, you know, that's a very human thing.
It taps on our human need for connection.
What becomes different about high control religion, fundamentalism, cults, Is that there's a very serious consequence for not engaging and feeling and doing and being this prototype that they have created.
You know, in a very real way, there's there's like the consequence of eternal conscious torment or hell, right?
So if you don't follow these rules, if you don't participate in these ways, if you don't relate to people in very specific ways, it could mean that you are disconnected from the community.
It could mean you're viewed as a dangerous person.
It could mean that you're going to hell.
And so I think that that's a very important distinguishing factor.
That's why you don't just stop going to church.
It's like, well, if I stop going to church, I lose everybody who's important to me.
I lose my entire identity.
I don't know if I die tomorrow where I'm going to go.
For eternity, like these are much, much bigger and much more dire, like existential questions that we're having to wrestle with.
And as much as religion loves to cut people off from body, feelings, sensation, emotion, like those sorts of things, there really is a dependency on that.
To get you hooked into it, right?
Again, oh, high control religion can really hook into very human needs like connection and feeling connected, right?
Having those experiences where, you know, oh, that's a God experience or answered prayer or whatnot.
Like it's dependent on that so long as the feelings are connected to God.
Um, not really world stuff, but, but God.
So emotion is, is connected to God in specific.
But that's also then, you know, we can, there's a whole other list of things that can happen as a result of that and can be dangerous.
Um, yeah.
So I don't know if that answers that question, but I do agree with what you were saying and very much on the right track of, um, of the, what it's like to participate in a group like that.
That's one of the things I tell students or I'll tell other people when we talk is that Christianity in particular has a tradition of de-emphasizing the body and embodiment and so forth.
And lots of people recognize that that's a critique that has existed.
As long as people have been thinking about Christianity, there have been strands that recognize this.
And yet the irony or contradiction or whatever is that it absolutely depends upon that embodiment to sort of cultivate those norms.
And I think in a often very self-conscious Way that is just sort of hidden or masked, that I think is one of those ways that it shapes us in ways that we're just not aware of.
And I think it heightens maybe some of those processes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So another sort of thought with this that I'm thinking about is, you know, you've talked about trauma training and trauma therapists and others who work with trauma.
you've talked about the sort of the field of psychology and the role that religion had in that of I always sort of see to the pro social or the religion is just bad get it out of here like sort of like not a lot in between I have I'll be very like like you're a licensed therapist I am not I'm a I'm a coach that's different
I'm very clear with clients about this and when I meet with clients the protocols of the center you know we have this intake and we meet with clients and make very clear that you know what are they looking for and what what am I and And sometimes I have clients who say, no, I need I need somebody who's like a licensed therapist.
And I'm like, great.
I have a lot of clients, though, who are also seeing therapists.
And for them, the work of the center, the work that I do as a coach is like a supplement to that.
And what they'll tell me is, My therapist is great and I love working with them and they've been so helpful and they've done this and this and this and this and often, you know, we'll sort of dovetail what we do into that, but they'll say, but the religion piece, they just kind of don't get.
And some of that for me, I think is because I have a background coming out of that sort of subculture of high control religious environments and American evangelicalism and so forth.
But I think it's not just my personal background, I think it's some knowledge about religion and how it works.
Do you hear that too?
And what is that piece that they're missing?
Why is it that so many, and it's not universal, I don't intend this as a critique of therapists at all, right?
What is it that clients do you think are finding when they say that?
When they're like, my therapist just kind of doesn't get it and I need to supplement that.
I need to kind of boost what I'm getting with this specific focus on religion.
Yeah.
You know, I mentioned earlier that like academically, you know, and how we're trained as therapists and psychologists, there is this emphasis on this pro-social factor.
But I think we have to like span out from that even more and we have to look like culturally, societally, like religion is Is a pro-social factor.
We live in a country where there is a myth that we are a Christian country, or we are founded on the Bible and Christian principles.
And so, um, so the church as an institution is celebrated, you know, we design our work weeks and holiday time and all these things around religion.
And even when you leave religion, you're still not actually, I mean, you're still getting it from all these cultural places.
And so I think that religion is typically favored in the cultural conversation.
And even for, you know, therapists who aren't particularly religious themselves or, you know, would have no problem with clients who believe different than they do.
There's just not a larger cultural conversation around what is religious trauma?
What is high control religion?
Like, how could these practices be harmful?
And so I think that, you know, we are starting to see, and we see this a lot at the center, is that people are just going like, it feels so good to be in this virtual space, this virtual office, and I don't have to sit here and convince you that it wasn't just a bad church experience, or I don't have to convince you or teach you about what my specific religion believed and tell you why that would be a bad thing and how it negatively impacted me.
Um, I think that's what we offer that many other places can't or don't or don't know how to because we just, we don't have like the cultural framework to understand that religion, except for these really, again, extreme cases of clergy sexual abuse.
And some of the things that we see outside of the news, like people kind of just go like, you know, That's a bad church experience or that's not my experience, so I don't understand it.
And I think ideally, you know, most of our clients would say, like, I would love to find a therapist or a coach who is trauma informed, trauma trained, knows about religious trauma, knows like all this stuff.
And unfortunately, we just That's just never going to be possible.
That's like the unicorn, which I think all the practitioners at CTRR are unicorns because it's like everybody kind of is dealing with this.
But I think that ideally, I think that's what attracts people to CTRR and what frustrates people about other therapists and coaches is going like, I I feel like I'm paying you to educate you about this experience and that can feel really discouraging.
And there's, I don't know about you, but I've had many clients who have felt very invalidated and very discouraged by previous therapists and coaches who hear that person's story and say, Oh, you know, like, That's, you know, people are imperfect, but God is perfect.
Or gosh, that sounds like it's a church hurt, but you know, you need to just get over it.
You need to go somewhere else.
And I think that's really invalidating to a lot of people.
And it can, when we talked about in the last episode, this comparison piece, like, How dangerous that can be.
Like it takes so much bravery and courage for somebody to say, something's wrong here.
Like I don't, I, I feel like, you know, I'm having these inflated reactions to these little things, or I know I wasn't abused by a clergy member, but I'm still having these other adverse responses.
It takes a brave person to say, I need support around this.
And if you are going to venture out and be brave and like, say, I need some help.
And somebody looks at you and says, Oh, that's not that bad.
Like, that was just a really shitty pastor.
Like, ooh, gosh.
Like, that pulls you right back in your shell, and it's harder to go get support than after that.
Yeah, I think you touch on so much there, and it is.
I hear the same thing from clients, and clients who've had the same experience.
I often refer to it as a sort of cultural deference to at least certain kinds of religion.
I think that's why, as you say, everybody will lob rocks at Scientology or something like that, or some extreme You know, commune in the woods or clergy sexual abuse, and rightfully so.
We also have like problematic, you know, Islamophobia in America.
So if somebody's going to be critical of Islam or something, hey, no problem.
That's kind of mainstream.
But there's a cultural deference to specifically Christianity, Judaism maybe to a lesser extent, and a certain kind of Christianity and so forth.
And I think that's one of the reasons why I find so many of the clients are such, I think most people think of it as like really familiar kinds of religion.
And when I talk to people about the work that I do as a trauma practitioner, they're like, oh, wow.
Like, I'm like, no, this is just somebody who just they grew up going to mass or they were, you know, they went to the storefront community church down the road or whatever.
And I think that that's part of why And I think another piece of this, and I love thinking about this, is you talk about that piece of why it is that so many therapists miss it.
I think there is also that sense of, because what I hear from clients is, you talked last time a little bit about hypervigilance.
That's the sort of counsel-y word for basically this kind of constant awareness of not wanting to do something wrong or run afoul of something.
I think there is also this cultural sense that religion is about belief and not about embodiment and not about changing how we feel.
And so I find that clients really have a hard time trying to articulate to a therapist like how pervasive That was that it wasn't just about, oh, here's what you do on Sunday morning, but that they lived, they were taught to live every moment, every waking moment of their life, trying not to live certain ways or having to live other ways.
Or let's say that they experienced same sex attraction.
They spent every waking moment trying to tamp that down and pretend that it wasn't there.
I think that's another factor that I see at work.
Yeah, I think the other thing that's so important when we talk about dynamics of power and control, so we've used this term high control religion.
So, before I worked with religious trauma clients or overtly advertised that this was an area of specialty, I actually worked with domestic violence clients.
That's an important part of my own story and my client work.
And it was interesting because there's some really excellent resources and tools for working with domestic violence that is very helpful in a therapeutic context.
And I remember one day, kind of as I was processing my own relationship and then church, I could not figure out what the difference was between what my ex-partner had been telling me and what I had been learning about what God said about me.
And I was like, this is a problem because these same tactics that were used by this earthly abuser is also what was happening to me in churches.
And what's important to know about that is not only the overlap, but there's something about the way that dynamics of power and control are created in a relationship or in a system are very subtle, very much like over time.
You know, I think about like if you were to go on a date with somebody who the very first date you sit down at the table and they curse out the server and they throw a drink in their face and they throw the table over and they are just horrible.
Like you're not going on a second date with them.
I mean, you might, but like that that one's on you that like you're probably not going to go to a second date, just like if you were to go to a church and they were to say, oh, by the way, Uh, we need 10% of your income.
Here's what you can wear.
Here's who you can talk to.
Here's who you don't talk to.
Here's all the rules.
And if you don't, hey, if you don't do this, then you're going to hell or, you know, we're going to start rumors about you or whatever.
Like, No, you're going to be like, oh, no, this is not something I'm going to sign up for.
But abusive relationships or abusive systems are not like that.
It's a very subtle over time things that that you go, well, I mean, gosh, I've done this, too.
We talk about like minimizing or denying or blaming things.
Well, we've all engaged in those behaviors, right?
And we go, well, you know, okay, they were upset or, you know, they said this, they minimize and it's not that bad.
And so I think that's, what's important to realize with high control religions, with cults, with relationships that are demonstrating these systems of power and control is that it is very subtle.
It is over time.
It's like slowly taking over your life.
And so, so, so that we can get to a point where, you know, a leadership person from the church can be like, Hey, Yeah, that shirt is too low.
And, you know, like that's that's really making your brothers in Christ stumble.
And I really think it would be a good idea for you to put on a shirt underneath that or whatever.
And and it's to this point where you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I should.
Like it's you know, if they told you that the first day you walked into the church, you'd be like, who are you to tell me like what I can and cannot wear?
But over time, We've created this system in which then somebody can come up to you and say, hey, here's what's appropriate.
Here's what's not.
And that one example unto itself is kind of like, oh, whatever.
But when we pile them up on top of each other and when we start to look at the pervasiveness of where that control is reached for, it's in areas of communication and sexuality and You know, emotions and how we think and who we associate with, like, all of a sudden it becomes very all-encompassing.
And we start to see that these messages that we heard on a Sunday morning don't just stop at the message.
They are, like, embodied in us.
They kind of sink down from your head all the way down into your body.
And that's, yeah, it goes back to why we don't just leave, you know?
Like, it's so much more complex than that.
It's a really, it's sort of a painful analogy, this thing with relation, but I think it's, I think it's exactly right because to that question of, you know, are, are, are you anti-religious?
I get that question all the time and I say, no, I'm not.
Um, but at the same time, it's, it's the same way.
It's like saying, are you anti-relationship?
You had a bad relationship, you have whatever, most people are like, well, no.
But at the same time, if somebody says, well, I can fix my partner, right?
I can, I can fix this person.
I can, you know, and usually that's not going to happen.
And, and what I, you know, the series is called it's in the code.
And one of the things that I would say, and I say to people is.
If you're in that kind of pervasive, high control religious environment, it is in the code.
It is written in, it is the sort of software on which it runs.
And there's no fixing it.
You can still be religious.
There are religious orientations and expressions and communities that are not that, just as there are relationships that are not abusive or coercive or any of those sorts of things.
But they're often not the same relationship.
It's not going to be the same community.
And I think that that's a real key component.
When people talk to me about, are you anti-religion or whatever, or I've got clients who are still sort of figuring that out.
And I'll say, well, clearly like over here, this is not where you want to be.
If you want to talk about resources the other way, if religion is something that might still be part of your life, it's something that you value, we can talk about that.
But it's not going to be the same one.
The same that somebody would say, you may have a great, healthy relationship with somebody someday, but it's not going to be this person.
It's not going to be this relationship.
So I think that relational analogy and those parallels are really, really important, as well as the subtlety.
In the series, it's in the code.
You know, I go down this long list.
When I first started this series, I thought it'd be like a couple months or something.
And it's been going on for like forever because I keep hearing from people, but those are all the subtle ways that this control is exercised.
And that's what comes up over and over and over for clients and for listeners and for others.
And so it's a really apt analogy.
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is maybe a bit more extreme, but we probably have all heard of stories or seen things on TV where it's like there's an abusive relationship maybe between a heterosexual couple and in the Male partner pushes the female down the stairs and somehow she takes the blame for it.
Oh, you know, it was my fault.
And we look and we go, oh my gosh, like how did that happen?
Like where you are at the point where you take responsibility for a physical assault.
And it's not overnight.
It is this slow fade.
And part of what a dynamic of power and control does is it slowly strips away things like autonomy.
voice and choice.
And it's then replaced in a violent, domestically violent relationship with the voice of the perpetrator, the voice of the abuser.
So much so that that person doesn't even really have to do much.
They can just kind of like infiltrate your psyche And then you are the one internally repeating these messages.
So they're like, Oh, I didn't really actually tell you that.
And they might be true.
Like they didn't actually tell you that.
They didn't say like, Oh, you're the one who did this to me.
But because of the way that they already kind of rated you down.
You then take on their narrative and their story as your own.
And the same thing happens in high control religion, where it's these subtle things over time.
You're not worthy.
You're evil.
You know, but you're so lucky that God saved you.
Or you're so lucky that Jesus died on the cross for your sins.
And that's called grace.
And so So it's this like wearing down and all of a sudden then you're like, but I am unworthy.
I am an evil sinner.
I don't deserve anything.
And it's like that pastor or that parent or that partner is not telling you that anymore, but it's coming from within you so that when something happens, you go, well, yeah, I did deserve that.
I did deserve that poor treatment.
I did deserve these things to happen.
So it's a very, it really messes with you.
And that's why I think it's so hard when we're talking religious trauma.
There's this whole process of untangling because to believe like I'm not worthy.
That does, that's very negatively impacting psychologically and physiologically.
And so I think we have to like, as therapists, as coaches, as just humans, we need to understand how much that can sink into our bodies and then, and just stays there unless we address it.
Yeah, it's, um, just, uh, I saw my last sort of thought on this as it brings us back to me for me to that, you know, uniqueness of religion, because all those things you describe, I'm like, yep, they're all there in those religious sites, but like right on the surface, like it's, there is.
An agent outside of you who is in control of you, you have no inherent worth, except from that agent.
You are supposed to internalize what that agent wants you to do and so forth.
And it's just, it's such a, religion doesn't have to look like that.
I keep wanting to repeat that, right?
It doesn't have to look like that, but there are forms of religion that are just ready-made for that kind of exploitation.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think it should be important to say that religion doesn't always have a spiritual component to it.
We can be religious about many other things.
And so that's why, you know, when even when people talk about like religious trauma, we automatically associate with spirituality, a church, you know, those sorts of things.
But it really is like a belief system that you're subscribing to.
It's a way of life.
It's, you know, and so, yeah, whether it's coming from a church or denomination or pastor or some other sort of group where acceptance is dependent on all these other things.
Yeah, like it can be very pervasive.
And yeah, if there's a way to remain yourself and make your own choices and practice autonomy without having to risk your position or acceptance, like please tell me about it because I might be interested in joining too.
But if it's going to include that control element that it's very dangerous then.
Yeah, so thank you so much.
I want to conclude again by just folks who are interested, who want to read more about Dr. Laura Anderson or the work that she does, go to the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, CTRR, or you can Google probably not just Dr. Laura Anderson, because there are a lot of Laura Andersons in the world, but Laura Anderson Center for Trauma Resolution or something like that.
It'll come up.
A lot of good resources there.
As always, I would love to hear your feedback on this.
You can email me, danielmillerswaj, danielmillerswaj, at gmail.com.
I always have the caveat that I don't respond to enough emails, but I do look at them and value them.
And Laura, I really appreciate the work that you do and value the things you're doing that, for me, were very new, and I think they still kind of are, and it's just really powerful.
So thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It's always a pleasure to be able to talk about this.
