One of the most painful aspects of religious trauma is the way it teaches us to distrust our own emotions. In psychological research, we see that early life trauma results in developmental delays. This is because brain development can be interrupted by maltreatment, neglect, or abuse in adolescence or childhood.

Religious communities should be our safest emotional and physical spaces. These groups often talk about creating safety and salvation for those seeking such, but these spaces can quickly become toxic, abusive, and traumatizing.  

Many people with marginalized identities face hate, discrimination, and bullying related to those identities. Some of this hate is external, but there can also be internalized hate against these identities that have been learned from other people or society. One common way people may cope in response to hate, discrimination, and bullying, is by compartmentalizing their marginalized identities. 

Gaslighting is one of those terms that we hear often in the mental health world today.  It is a common tool narcissists will use to control those around them and is an oh-too-common occurrence when discussing emotional manipulation.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that causes the victim to question their sanity, their instincts, or their perception of events. You’ve probably experienced it, even if you didn’t have the words to describe what was happening to you.

There are many places and providers offering EMDR therapy. The therapeutic relationship is the most important factor in the success of therapy, so we always want you to find the therapist that works best for you. With that in mind, we work hard to create a safe, empathic environment for you whether you come to see us for psychotherapy or EMDR therapy.

Get your EMDR questions answered here. We talk about how EMDR works, whether it might be right for your specific struggle, and how our staff creates a warm and inviting space to help you safely process your trauma.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is an evidence-based psychotherapy practice meant to reduce symptoms of traumatic memories and events.

My favorite thing to do is to stop toxicity and abuse in its tracks by empowering folks to see emotional manipulation from a mile away. Are you ready? Here are the ways to protect yourself from emotional manipulation:

We get a lot of questions about gaslighting.  One of the most common has to do with whether or not the experience "counts" as gaslighting, and where gaslighting fits under the Trauma umbrella. Gaslighting feeds off of confusion and murkiness, so let's shed some light here. 

By now, you’ve probably seen the show MAID pop up on your Netflix suggestions. You might have even watched it and it gave you a lot to think about. Maid points out some incredibly important nuances to how abusive relationships and domestic violence play out for those attempting to escape. Let’s talk through the important things that happened over the series that helps you understand what you are going through or what others might suffer when trying to escape.

Dissociation refers to a shutdown of sensory experience. There are two main types of dissociation, which include shame and terror dissociation. Both are developed in response to severe or ongoing trauma. This means that during a traumatic event, or a series of traumatic events (such as we often see in survivors of childhood abandonment, neglect, or other types of abuse), our best option was to disconnect. 

Dissociation is one way that the brain and body respond to difficult, trauma-induced emotions. It is the ultimate state of hiding or escaping from the intense danger that your body has registered either outside or inside yourself.

One of the most obvious and painful parts of religious trauma is the sexual repression that is often baked into the theology, dogma, or rules of our religious communities. Because sexuality is such a personal and unavoidable part of the human experience, those that are repressed tend to feel traumatized by their identities being denied and “in the name of God.”

It’s sometimes hard to imagine how the church and religious communities that teach love and compassion can become abusive and harmful.  But any institution, when power structures go unchecked and the “message” becomes more important than the people, is vulnerable to becoming harmful, rather than helpful.  This typically happens slowly over time and can be hard to see when you are inside the community.  

Attachment therapy uses the framework of Attachment Theory, which helps us to understand how relationships with our primary caregivers predict our sense of safety and security in the world, starting in infancy. These early relationships also tell us how safe other people are, how hard we should work to express or reject our emotional needs, and how deserving of love we are as individuals--felt “truths” that we can’t help but carry with us long after they’re born.  

Inner child work is a style of therapy that focuses on addressing unmet childhood needs and healing attachment wounds while exploring how the inner child shows up in your adult life.

Recovering from religious trauma can be overwhelming and confusing, but there are commonalities that those with religious trauma share which may demystify the experience for you and help you feel less alone. Here are four things that may surprise you about religious trauma.

Most people who have heard the term “premarital counseling” tend to associate it with therapy for only engaged couples, and oftentimes with a priest/pastor. However, premarital counseling is an option for any couples who are either engaged, considering marriage, or considering what it would look like to commit to their partner long-term.

Woven Trauma Therapy consists of a group of therapists that love reading (and watching Bravo). Of course, there’s lots of reading for the trauma care we provide to our patients, but we also love a good fiction story. It helps us get out of our heads and into another world. We’ve curated our reading list for fiction for the fall of 2021. Come read with us.