When Easter Hurts
Easter can stir deep pain for survivors of religious trauma, often resurfacing old spiritual wounds. This reflection explores how fear-based theology, coercive messages, and self-abandonment shaped the Easter narrative for many, and invites survivors to reclaim the season with gentleness, autonomy, and authenticity.
Deconstructing Purity Culture in Your Relationship
Relationships may change, evolve, or even end during this process, and that's okay. Embrace the freedom to redefine your beliefs about love, sex, and emotional intimacy in a way that feels authentic to you. You may both change throughout this process and that’s ok.
Purity Culture 101: Unpacking the Beliefs, Harm, and Healing
Purity culture, a movement deeply embedded in conservative evangelical Christianity, has caused immense harm by tying self-worth to sexual purity and imposing rigid, fear-based teachings on sexuality. Its impacts are far-reaching, affecting women, men, queer, and trans folks alike. This blog explores the core tenets of purity culture, how it controls bodies and emotions, and the lasting shame it leaves in its wake. It also offers guidance on how to heal from these wounds by reclaiming autonomy, challenging harmful beliefs, and embracing a new, self-defined relationship with sex and intimacy.
Relationships and Religious Trauma
In high-control religious groups, love often comes with fine print. Relationships are deep, intense, and all-encompassing - until you start questioning. Boundaries are discouraged, and belonging is conditional. Leaving means facing isolation and loss, but it also opens the door to rebuilding authentic, unconditional connections. True love doesn’t require surrendering yourself.
Summer Lovin’
February brings a flood of roses and romance, but for those who grew up in purity culture, love and sexuality can feel far more complicated. In this blog, I reflect on my own experience—how a teenage kiss was framed as spiritually dangerous—and the long road to reclaiming my sense of self. If you’ve ever second-guessed your sexuality, struggled with shame, or felt frozen in your own experiences, know you’re not alone. Healing is possible, and there are practitioners, books, and resources that can help.
Spiritual Abuse Awareness Month: Shedding Light on a Silent Struggle
It’s Spiritual Abuse Awareness Month. Spiritual abuse hides in subtle behaviours, using religious authority to control, shame, or manipulate. Its impacts—shame, fear, and identity loss—are deeply tied to religious trauma. This blog explores the harm, the healing, and the hope that survivors can reclaim their voice and story. You are not alone.
What do you need?
It can be mortifying to ask for what you need. Especially if you’ve spent any time in high-control / high-demand faith settings. You learn quickly that the needs of others come before your own and it becomes clear that it’s easier to just not have any.
Finding Freedom in Feeling
Religious trauma often teaches us to fear our emotions, labeling them as too messy, too wrong, or too dangerous to trust. In this blog, I share my journey of reclaiming emotional safety and learning to embrace my feelings as vital signals guiding me toward healing and wholeness.
Christmas, Reimagined: Navigating the Holidays After Religious Trauma
For many survivors of religious trauma, the holiday season isn’t all joy and carols—it’s a time laden with triggers, grief, and complex emotions. Whether it’s the sting of strained family dynamics, the loss of once-beloved traditions, or the pressure to conform to a “perfect” holiday ideal, Christmas can feel more like a challenge than a celebration. This blog explores why the season hits differently for those with religious trauma and offers heartfelt, practical strategies for navigating it with care. From setting boundaries to creating new traditions, this is your guide to reclaiming the holidays on your own terms—messy, imperfect, and wholly yours.
The Layers of Loss: Grief and Religious Trauma
Grief in the context of religious trauma is complex, layered, and often unspoken. It’s not just the loss of faith but also of community, identity, and belonging. This blog dives into the unique challenges of grieving a faith system, exploring the tangled web of sadness, anger, and shame that often accompanies it.
The Narcissist’s Playground: Understanding Narcissism in High-Control Religious Environments
High-control environments can serve as fertile ground for individuals with narcissistic traits, offering built-in hierarchies, unquestioning loyalty, and a ready-made audience to manipulate. These individuals often present as charismatic, morally superior leaders, but beneath the surface lies a pattern of control, lack of empathy, and spiritual abuse. Understanding the traits of narcissism and their allure to these environments is key to recognising and breaking free from their harm.
Navigating the Complexities of Spiritual Gaslighting
This blog examines spiritual gaslighting from both external sources and our internal dialogues, emphasising how it distorts our reality and leads to shame. It highlights symptoms of spiritual gaslighting and offers insights into healing through self-compassion, connection, and therapy. Ultimately, it encourages reclaiming our voices and narratives to foster community support in the healing journey.
Trusting ourselves as we heal.
I love food, I love the joy it brings, I love the colours, the textures, the tactile practice of preparing meals and of course the taste. I’m so sad that so many of us were taught this could be wrong or a path to sin. Learning to trust ourselves, our body and its desires and the ways in which we are being led by these, not led astray, is a powerful part of our healing from religious trauma.
Leaving the Church, Finding Myself: A Journey of Queer Identity and Healing
This is my journey as a Queer woman who left the church, facing shame, rejection, and ultimately finding healing. It reflects on the struggle to embrace my authentic self and the joy of finding love and acceptance, a path shared by many LGBTQIA+ individuals from religious communities.
Shared Journeys – The Benefit of Practitioner’s Lived Experience
When navigating recovery from religious trauma, finding a practitioner with lived experience can be profoundly impactful. Their unique understanding of the subtle triggers and emotional scars that accompany such trauma fosters a deeper connection, allowing clients to express their feelings without fear of judgment. This shared journey not only validates the pain but also inspires hope, demonstrating that healing and reclaiming one's identity is possible.
What sort of space is a Religious Trauma Collective?
The Religious Trauma Collective is a space for those navigating the pain and isolation of leaving faith. We’re here to say, “You’re not alone.” Whether you’re rethinking spirituality or rebuilding your identity, this is a place for connection, support, and finding new ways to belong.
The Little Voice In Our Head…Born From Religious Trauma
Discover the freedom of embracing your inner voice. Break free from the societal norms that keep you from living authentically.
Religious Enmeshment - The Loneliness of Exiting
Understanding the hidden challenges of leaving religious environments. Learn how to cope with the feelings of alienation, longing, and bewilderment from loneliness.
I Don’t Know What To Believe Anymore – The Impact of Spiritual Gaslighting
Uncover the hidden dangers of spiritual gaslighting. Find out how it can impact your beliefs, identity and leave you vulnerable to manipulation.
Lovebombing & The Church: The Strategy We Don’t Talk About
Learn about lovebombing and its manipulative tactics used to lure vulnerable individuals seeking a sense of belonging and purpose.