Understanding Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Leaving Religion (Part 3 of 3) by Dr. Marlene Winell ~ R eligious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a function of both the chronic abuses of harmful religion and the impact of severing one’s connection with one’s faith and faith community. It can be compared to a combination of PTSD and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). In the last article of this series, I explained some of the toxic aspects of authoritarian religions that cause long-term psychological damage (Bible-based ones in particular). In this writing, I will address the trauma of breaking away from this kind of religion. Image via Wikipedia With PTSD, a traumatic event is one in which a person experiences or witnesses actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. Losing one’s faith, or leaving one’s religion, is an analogous event because it essentially means the death of one’s previous life – the end of reality as it was unders...

By Justin B ~ W hen I was a Christian, wearing the "facade" of being doubtless and patently pious was generally advised among some churches. Before you enter the church, you are filled with the questions and doubts that are so integral to being human. In public school, I learned to scrutinized those questions and doubts and utilize them to advance my learning and help me mature to a someone with more complicated questions. Within the structure framework of Sunday School, Kids are instructed to passively accede to belief in the veracity of the superficial analysis of mythological stories. It is akin to having a whole high school class read "Macbeth" as a virtuous character and the witches as literal satanic beings that were truly existent in this world. We often see this with the Noah story where we are led to believe that he is no doubt an unadulterated moral character where in reality, his "subconscious" reveals someone who is quite negligent of others...

By Gina Marie ~ I have been struggling with my faith for the past year and a half. I really have no idea where I will end up at the end of this journey, but I have encountered some very frustrating remarks from those attempting to "help" or convert me back to blind belief. These are things I never, ever want to hear again as "reasons" to not doubt anymore. 1. Your doubt is because of Satan! Trust God! Thank you for implying that my rational assessment of issues that are troubling me is the fault of an evil being, and because of such, you nor I are required to deal with these ideas and I must blindly put faith back in the system that is troubling me in the first place. If spiritual warfare is causing me to have these thoughts, simply crying, "Warfare!" and ignoring my questions and doubts isn't going to make my brain, and its nagging through processes, go away. 2. God is mysterious. This tends to be a catch-all answer for questions that deal...

By Jane Douglas ~ P eople coming out of a life of faith face a whole lot of challenges. Often our leaving costs us all or at least most of our friends. Our support networks vanish overnight and we have to learn how to build new relationships from scratch. Without a written moral code, we find ourselves dropping long-held beliefs and values on the table, picking each up in turn for examination as we decide which deserves a place in our new lives, which are due for revision, and which we will discard. The victims of spiritual and psychological abuse so prevalent (some would say inherent) in Christianity, we – and our poor children – often have to navigate a prolonged period of fragility as we begin the slow journey to recovery and wholeness. Unbelievers tend not to understand us. For those who have never been susceptible to religious sentiment, it’s almost impossible to comprehend its appeal. When we finally find the courage to reach out to non-believers and seek new relationships,...

By Heero Yuy ~ “History is much like an endless waltz, the three beats of war, peace, and revolution continue on forever.” - Gundam Wing Endless Waltz “Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.” -Mathew Arnold, Dover Beach S o it is in the human heart. Image by Ray.waltz via Flickr For much of my life, I was a Christian. Yet, I kept seeing cracks in my faith, and I did not know what to do with them. I have always been a deep thinker. Early on, I thought about the concept of an eternity in heaven. At first the idea seemed wonderful, and yet I thought that boredom must set in before eternity, and this was just another form of hell. This set off severe panic attacks ...

By Kylm ~ W ow, I am so excited to have found this site! I joined immediately. It is such a relief to find a group of people who think like I do! I live in the Bible Belt of the USA, a very hard place to grow up in and to admit that you are not a Christian. My parents did not attend church---they just sent me with friends, unaware of the garbage I was being taught. I lived in fear of church---actually the better word would be "terror", but I didn't tell my parents because I wanted to please them and thought they must believe what I was being taught, since they are the ones who sent me. As an adult, when I shared with my mom how traumatized I was as a child, she said, "I never would have sent you if I'd known they were teaching you that crap." I long ago forgave my parents, who otherwise raised me in the most encouraging, loving home a gal could have. I am 56 years old now and it took me 50 years to finally, once and for all, give up on Christianity. It ...

By Valerie Tarico ~ T his week the citizens of Mississippi will vote whether to legally assign the status of “personhood” to any human egg that has been penetrated by a sperm. I, for one, think that being a person is a serious gift. And I hope that if Mississippi awards personhood to fertilized eggs, they will take this seriously. Consider what that might imply: God or nature aborts approximately half of all fertilized eggs, most before a woman even knows she’s pregnant. These fertilized eggs end up, at a certain time of the month, wrapped in tissue in waste baskets before being picked up by garbage trucks. If these bundles contain deceased persons, then the state of Mississippi to my mind has responsibility to grant each of these small packets the most basic and ancient dignities of personhood: a name and a proper burial. Perhaps the organizations that have come together to pass the legislation can devote themselves to bringing in the dead and then providing some ritual to honor ...

By Yak ~ T his past week a volcanologist with LiveScience leaked a small story of what started as monitoring a relatively normal, dormant volcano in Bolivia, but turned out to be a 40-mile wide area of ground uplift due to the extraordinarily rapid filling of the magma chamber beneath it. A forty-mile diameter area of the Andes is rising at nearly an inch a year due to magma pushing its way toward the surface. Image by einalem via Flickr The area of ground that is rising is a little smaller than Yellowstone caldera , but larger than Long Valley caldera , both colloquially referred to as "Supervolcanos." The magma chamber is filling at the rate of 1 cubic meter per second. There is bona fide concern that a new large caldera, or "supervolcano" is in the process of forming. A full-on eruption of that 40 mile diameter magma chamber will create an existential challenge to all life on the planet. In today's vernacular, if it erupts, it could easily create a...

Son of a preacher man ~ H ome life of fear, I don't want to sin, I don't want to sin! Look out, their watching your every move, just waiting to see one of your sins . Hide things in your room, they dam well search there too. I am sin. Better look out you got no one to turn to, your brothers, your sisters will dob you in quicker than sin… Playing a N64 game "now run like hell" I say to his computer character, "you said hell, I'm telling on you". Dam why did I say that word, I'm going to be in so much trouble, I am so stupid, I am such a sinner, I hate myself... I better hide. At home one evening, "Who did this?" he shouts, "What?" we timidly reply. There was a cake in the cupboard, all brand new, and without fault. "This" he shouts pointing at a mark in the icing. The mark looks like someone had run their finger through the icing, to steal a sneaky taste. No one says a word, we all look around and start pleading our i...

By Carl S ~ N o one at my wife's church asks me what I think of their pastor. They probably don't want to know anymore than they would want to know what I have to say about the beliefs pushed there. My answer is ready anyway; "I don't trust him." Science I trust, as the method to decipher what is true or not. As I told my wife, contrary to what she believed, the truth is very hard to find. But, I respect science to a great extent because science respects humans. Science respects your mind, your intelligence, freedom of thought, and very much encourages them. Science does NOT tell you to believe without proof, but encourages you to find out for yourself; to doubt, question, test, refute or even overturn, what you have been told. Your curiosity is VERY important to scientists. All of these respects are absent in religions, as they demand you subject yourself to their authority. Your very humanness is considered "sinful." There is a different rule in ...

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~ C arl S. recently shared with me a letter his wife received from the American Center for Law and Justice , a far right evangelical organization founded by Pat Robertson . The letter is a request for donations for the Committee to Protect the Ground Zero Cross . Image via Wikipedia They want the addressee to enclose a check or money order and sign a document which reads: “I stand alongside the American Center for Law and Justice in full support of the cross at Ground Zero. Consisting of two steel beams in the shape of a cross that survived the Twin Towers collapse on 9/11, it has deep meaning to those personally impacted by the terrorist attacks on that fateful day, and to all freedom-loving citizens of the United States. It serves as a powerful remembrance and should not fall victim to ridiculous, anti-God complaints by atheist organizations. The claim that they are suffering both physical and emotional damages from the existence of the cross is rid...