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Religious trauma syndrome


FormerPK

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I have been thinking about the term "religious trauma syndrome" a lot lately. Apparently, this can happen to people who were raised under the influence of extreme religion, which in my case would be conservative evangelicalism (I'm a conservative southern baptist preacher's kid). Wondering if any of you have studied this, or experienced it yourself. How did it manifest for you, and how does it continue to affect your life? 

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15 hours ago, FormerPK said:

I have been thinking about the term "religious trauma syndrome" a lot lately. Apparently, this can happen to people who were raised under the influence of extreme religion, which in my case would be conservative evangelicalism (I'm a conservative southern baptist preacher's kid). Wondering if any of you have studied this, or experienced it yourself. How did it manifest for you, and how does it continue to affect your life? 

I think this is a real thing, I received trauma at a young age from other things, but I think depending on the child they can sufficiently be traumatized by an extreme religious experience.  Pretty sure any kid who gets out of Westboro Baptist church experiences this, and it would be rarer if kids in most churches would experience this unless the event was on the extreme side.  Like maybe a Bible Camp that really pushes it with scaring you about hell a little too young, or being shamed in front of the whole church for your behavior at a young age.  You are more likely to get trauma the more inexplicable the event, which is especially true after you deconvert, as those experiences then become more difficult to interpret.  As a preacher's kid in a Southern Baptist church, I would say you would have been likely exposed to more than the average kid.  If you have concerns yourself, I would ask yourself the level of disturbance you experience when you recall it, from 1-10 scale.  If it's high and it was longer than 6 months ago, then I would suggest seeing a therapist to maybe do some Cognitive Behavior Therapy, or EMDR.

 

It should be noted that Christianity feeds into a sizeable dose of guilt, which can really feed into depression, which is common among Ex-Christians.  Most people lose their belief systems and their behavior usually changes a bit, which can invite such cognitions to try and analyze and fix yourself but without much to replace Christianity with it goes back to the relaible habits of guilt in order to try and change your behavior.  These old beliefs left lots of traps and problems, which take years of rummaging through it to finally get past it.

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YouTube has some good Religious Trauma Syndrome videos by the 2 psychologist that came up with that designation. They both came out of extreme versions of Christian fundamentalism & were damaged by that experience. You might find their videos helpful.

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I do believe I experienced religious trauma syndrome to an extent, but it's been many years since I moved out of my childhood home, my Father is now deceased, and I have a pretty good relationship with my mom. Healing for me came through my Father's death, finding my own self and identity throughout my 20s, letting go of my parent's rigid belief system and legalistic ideals, and forgiving my mom, knowing that she was only raising us the way she believed was right. I feel my sister has suffered the most. She has some major psychological issues, and although she had some additional traumatic experiences later in life that sortof brought everything to the surface so to speak, I believe the root of her issues may very well be religious trauma from childhood. So the topic really interests me. I would be interested to see those you tube videos. As for my sister, she sees a psychiatrist regularly, and does pretty well for the most part. 

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