Religious trauma therapy in Denver
Heal from religious trauma and spiritual hurt to rediscover your true self through therapy.
What is religious trauma ?
Many people have heard of trauma therapy, but religious trauma is a specific type of trauma that occurs when someone’s religious experience becomes stressful, dangerous, abusive, or even degrading. It’s not limited to Christianity, a specific denomination or religion—trauma can happen within all different types of groups and people. However, traumatic religious experiences and spiritual hurt (often known as church hurt) can be incredibly damaging to a person’s identity and their physical, mental, sexual, and spiritual health.
Religious trauma is a type of trauma that’s more common than many people think, even in the Denver area. Some people refer to it as church hurt. It includes emotional, physical, and psychological stress that comes from negative, traumatic experiences that occur within a religious setting or by a trusted figure. Our team of therapists includes people from different faiths, levels of faiths, and none at all, and our collective experience inside and outside of religion can help you feel comfortable sharing your story, no matter what it is.
Many forms of religious trauma aren’t necessarily connected to a specific event—they can also accumulate over a long period of time through messages or beliefs that are created and endorsed by a community and influence someone’s worldview in negative ways. The source of these types of experiences can be caused by rejection, discrimination, different types of abuse, or dogmatic rules that can cause stress, depression, low-esteem, and even identity issues.
Also, many people experience religious trauma when they leave a harmful religious community. It’s often the right choice for them as individuals, but it can lead to feelings of confusion and disorientation, especially for people who have followed a strong set of beliefs and rules throughout their lives. It can lead to lost relationships with family, friends, spouses, and even the loss of wider support systems.
While many people find comfort and hope in religion, things like very strict religious teachings, manipulation, judgmental attitudes and more can lead to feelings of isolation, discrimination, or feeling unwanted in a community or congregation. There are times when abuse in different forms takes place, and it can break someone’s trust in a church, community, or religious leadership that can damage a person’s whole sense of self and identity.
Through religious trauma therapy, our therapists will help treat your trauma so that you can begin to heal, recover, and rediscover your identity as a person, whether that continues includes your religion or not. Our team of therapists includes inclusive Christian therapists, non-Christian therapists, and even therapists who don’t believe in any type of religion.
We’re not here to shame, preach to you, or invalidate your experience. We’re here to listen and help you heal. No matter your situation, we want to help you through your religious trauma so that you can regain your complete sense of self.
Religious trauma symptoms
The effects of religious trauma and church hurt can take many forms. They’re not limited to a single symptom, and many of the negative effects of religious trauma can happen simultaneously and manifest in different ways:
- PTSD-like symptoms, including nightmares and flashbacks about religious trauma.
- Perfectionism or feeling like they have to represent a higher level of moral value or superiority.
- Feelings of anxiety or panic attacks related to religious practices.
- Challenges making decisions because of fear on how a religion would view their choices.
- Low self-esteem or a negative sense of self as it relates to religion.
- Identity conflicts or confusion about your personal, often long-held beliefs.
- Lack of boundaries around what aspects of your life religion can influence or control.
- Intense thoughts or memories that come up related to a traumatic religious experience.
- Losing trust or having skepticism towards authority figures, communities, and religious institutions in many forms.
- Isolation, triggering emotions, or difficulty managing relationships because of the type of religion someone is.
Especially because many people grow up trusting every part of their religion from childhood, religious trauma can be especially complicated. Our therapists understand and research has shown that this type of trauma can often have stages:
- Someone experiences trauma: It could be directly related to a singular event, like discrimination or sexual assault, or it could be indirect, like a divorce from a close family member or the behavior of a group within a community.
- The trauma is intertwined with religion: The trauma is processed through someone’s religious worldview. For example, someone who is getting a divorce may feel like people in their church are looking down on them or blaming them for their circumstances.
- Religious communities can make things worse: Whether it’s a leader denying or gaslighting someone for reporting abuse, or a community leaving someone feeling isolated or like they deserved what happened to them, victims of religious trauma are often feaful of the effect their trauma can have on their place in a community.
How our therapists treat religious trauma
At My Denver Therapy, many of our therapists specialize in trauma with decades of combined experience. While religion can and does often play a large part in someone’s trauma, our therapists use proven methods of trauma therapy, including EMDR, to collaboratively work with our clients to create plans that are specific to their religious trauma. Even our Christian therapists don’t just “pray and hope for the best,” which many experience with Biblical counseling, they understand that church hurt is real. They’re inclusive of people in LGBTQ+ communities and those who have left the church for their own reasons..
It’s often said that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to trauma therapy, and it’s especially true for religious trauma. We take the time to get to know you, what you’ve experienced, and what you want to achieve through therapy to help you heal from what you’ve experienced in ways that work for you.
Together, we’ll help you create boundaries, discover new ways of thinking, have space to reflect on your beliefs, and explore what your relationship with religion and your worldview looks like moving forward.
What about religious trauma syndrome? (RTS)
Spiritual abuse vs. religious trauma
Spiritual abuse is generally seen as an experience that happens between two people. One person is generally a religious leader, and the other is someone who is “lower” on the hierarchy, like a volunteer or visitor. It can also be a parent who claims religious to abuse a child, mistreat a spouse, or use religious teachings to control someone or justify their behavior.
Religious trauma is usually related to an experience between a person and how they feel about their religion. While it can be, the religious trauma they experience doesn’t need to be linked to one person or incident. It can also be a series of incidents that create a traumatizing message or situation that changes how they feel about themselves, their community, and religion.
Other Specialties
Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Meet our therapists
My Denver Therapy is one of the largest woman-owned therapy private practices in Colorado with many of the best, most requested mental health therapists in the Denver Metro area.
As a therapist-owned practice with decades of combined experience, we care about seeing our clients heal, grow, and thrive. We’re one of the only therapy practices in Colorado with licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, addiction counselors, social workers, and psychiatric nurse practitioners who actively see new clients. Whether you’re an adult, teen, young adult, couple, or family, our inclusive therapist team is built to specialize in you.
Our practice started with one therapist in a shared office suite, but we’ve grown to help thousands of people in Colorado by providing in-person therapy at our conveniently located Denver Metro area counseling offices in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree, plus online therapy for clients throughout Colorado. Because of the way our team works, our therapists also provide consultation for other therapists and private practices in the Denver Metro area.
Our inclusive therapists provide some of the most innovative, effective, and in-demand forms of therapy available today, including EMDR, Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, CBT, and IFS. We also have more therapists trained in Ketamine-assisted therapy, EMDR, and more teen therapists and young adult counselors than nearly every other private practice in Denver.
We know that clients want to find the best therapists in Denver, so our team includes therapists with different backgrounds, specialities, and experiences to help you find the right fit. We’ll match you with one of our therapists who is the best for your goals, location, budget, and schedule to help you get started quickly.
We’re out of network for insurance, Tricare, and are unable to take Medicaid, but most of our therapists’ rates are lower than the local and national averages for therapy.
All of our therapists take a client-focused approach to counseling and approach each session with a commitment to your progress and growth.
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