Religion Shouldn’t Hurt

Dear Bloggosphere,
There’s a hot new instagram bandwagon. I’m jumping on it. Sort of.
Religion Shouldn’t Hurt. That’s the movement. Thats the hashtag. That’s the message. It’s geared at helping survivors of religious trauma to tell their stories.
Here’s why I’m keen to use my teeny tiny section of the interwebs to talk about why it matters.

Sometimes bandwagons annoy me. They tend to isolate one side of a story and ignore the complexities behind it. They can be little more than virtue signalling. They can offer up a quick blast of cathartic venting but give very little else to people who are impacted by dark side of the cause at hand. The “Religion Shouldn’t Hurt” movement (currently trending on Instagram in certain circles) is about empowering people to tell their stories of religious trauma in the hopes that we can gain a little traction when it comes to curtailing the corruption and abuse that exists within some (yeah yeah not all) churches.

To be honest, some of the stories are chilling. They contain details of people who turned to the church in their darkest moments and somewhere along the road, the place that should have been a safe haven became a breeding ground for more trauma. Others, like mine, involve people who were born into churches. We were baptised (or dedicated) there as babies. We played by the rules. We memorised chunks of the Bible, chapter and verse, and yet fell victim to the darkness within these communities.

Let’s be clear on this, too: the church that covers up abuse is also the church that retraumatises the victim. On this, as on so many things, we need to do much much better.

Anyway! I’m not actually going to tell my story. I’ve told snippets of it on “A Tiny Revolution” and on an upcoming episode of “A Spiritual Adventure” but I’m not going to rehash it. Why? Because awareness of religious trauma shouldn’t hinge on the salacious details of someones mistreatment. The fact is that Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is being talked about more and more. There are pushes to get it recognised in the DSM-IV (A diagnostic manual for psychologists) as its own class of trauma syndrome rather than a subset of extreme stress disorders. The recognition that RTS is unique in its presentations is important. This is not just about the amount of people who suffer from complex PTSD post religious abuse. Its about the layer of existential and eternal dread that gets layered over the top of it when abuse renders it impossible for someone to engage with their faith or faith community because of what it will do to their mental health. Too many people are forced to reckon with whether or not it is okay to defend themselves against their abuser, or whether God will judge them for that because the abuser is in a position of power in the church. Too many people have to walk away from church to recover from the trauma it caused, and by doing so face the existential dread of whether or not God will judge them for that too.

If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then God would love an RTS sufferer enough to recognise the pain caused by the institutions of religion and the toxic theology they too often condition us with. If God is love, then we surely won’t be damned for doing what we need to do to recover from the wrongs done against us in God’s name.

So point one is that Religious Trauma is real. Very real. Painfully real. Point number two is that it is conditioned quite deeply. Autonomically deeply, a lot of the time. Let me explain.

In the 1890’s, a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov did some experiments on dogs. Yes, I’m talking about Pavlov’s Dog in a piece about religious trauma. Go with me here.

Dogs, like humans, salivate when they smell food. That is what we are meant to do. Our autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for all the functions we don’t think about (heartbeat, sweating, blood pressure, salivation among other things), organises it for us. We can’t control it - directly anyway. Pavlov played around with this concept. Every time he bought the food out, he would ring a bell. Soon the dogs began to associate the bell with food. Then, when the bell rang on its own, they would salivate anyway.

Their nervous systems had been reprogrammed. We call this classical conditioning.

It is present in every day life. My son vomited his Easter eggs all over the car last week. For the next week, he was sure chocolate made him sick and he would feel sick at the thought of it. Because I’m a dedicated mother, I reconditioned him by showing him he can eat chocolate without spewing. He just couldn’t eat a mountain of chocolate and then look at a phone in a car.

Still, the visceral response of feeling sick at the thought of chocolate once you’ve spewed it all over the car is one type of classical conditioning. Your body responds automatically to the stimuli because of a bad reaction to it. But its not the only way conditioning occurs. One of the earlier, more horribly unethical examples of classical conditioning was the case of little Albert; a nine month old baby who loved playing with the little white lab mice at first. But they conditioned him to fear those very mice by sounding a loud bang every time a mouse was released. He would cry at the sound but grew to associate that fear response with the mice. Eventually it was discovered that Little Albert had been conditioned to fear not only the mice, but all white fluffy things.

Thank GOD we now have ethical panels to stop horrendous experiments like this from taking place nowadays. Anyway…

What do Pavlov’s Dog and Little Albert have to do with religious trauma?

I raise these to illustrate that trauma isn’t housed simply in the mind. It isn’t simply intrusive memories. When we have been in environments that hold such mixed stimuli, those memories can be tied up with physical responses. As such, they can be conditioned together. The dread you felt when you heard a certain person say a certain thing can produce a fear response in you years afterwards when you hear that same phrase, or see that same sign. And that response is deeply physical, not just mental or emotional distress. Your body can feel that distress as well. Common fear responses can include sweating, increased respiratory rate, racing heart, sweaty palms, right up to feeling flighty or frozen, being unable to think, or suffering from flashbacks or night terrors.

Church, for me as for many, is a place of mixed memories. It held happiness as well as fear, dread, and humiliation at times. It was a place I took seriously, because I took (and take) my spirituality seriously. I, like many, wanted to please God. I wanted to do what He wanted me to do. I didn’t want to go to Hell. I gave great weight to the teachings of those who took the pulpit. I was raised to believe certain pastors and leaders without ever questioning. Immediate, unquestioning obedience was the expectation.

Church is also a place where one can reach an altered state of consciousness. We do this in worship and in extended prayer sessions. In evangelicalism or neocharismatic practice particularly, these sessions can be hours long, and involve praying in tongues for extended periods of time, yelling in agreement with someone regardless of what they are saying. The logical brain is cast off as we “put to death the flesh” and “Press in to the spirit.” It is an altered state of consciousness.

For the person who has been traumatised in religious settings or by people they were exposed to at church, this is a toxic mix. This toxic combination of mixed memories, orientation towards pleasing God and by virtue of that the church leaders, the music, the prayer, the altered state of consciousness, the friendships, the happiness, the theology (good and bad), the sights, the smells, the sounds - it can all elicit a trauma response from the body that has been designed to protect you. And you can’t just undo this conditioning by acknowledging it. This work takes time, because it isn’t just your mind that learned it. Your body and your primal brain systems did too.

So your body and brain do what they are meant to do. They go into survival mode.

When we say church shouldn’t hurt, it isn’t just about a bad experience. It is about something that goes far deeper than that. Church shouldn’t condition you to fear. It shouldn’t result in people suffering from complex PTSD. It shouldn’t result in abuse or abuse coverups that retraumatise a victim.

It shouldn’t cost good dollars in therapy sessions to recover from this conditioning that elicits visceral, bodily survival responses and fires off the fear responses in the brain.

Yet this is what it does for so many. I’m happy to say that recovery is possible, and that reclaiming a spiritual practice that sits right with you is absolutely possible. There are some amazing voices out there on social media who are leading the way when it comes to deconstructing toxic theology and toxic religious experiences, and my hope is that these show RTS sufferers that they aren’t alone. I know that many of these voices have been instrumental in my own recovery and reclaiming of my authentic self. I hope they are for you too.

If you have been touched by the “Religion Shouldn’t Hurt” movement, if you have suffered trauma in church, please know that recovery is work that takes time and often a good therapist. You are not alone in your suffering. Don’t be alone in your recovery.

Religion, spirituality, should be positive. It should be uplifting. It should inspire us to be our freest, truest, most altruistic selves. It should surround us with love and community. It should bring solace in our most difficult moments but remind us that we can make it through. It should empower. It should care. If these things are missing from the iteration of religion or spirituality that you are experiencing, then I would encourage you to ask yourself, is this what Jesus would do to me? If the answer is no, get out of there and don’t look back. There is a community of people out here who have deconstructed from toxic religion and found a way to be free. Many of us are in therapy and highly recommend it. We all sit at different places on the spirituality spectrum. We (Should) all affirm your right to find your own way and are here to support you if you need it.

That and your local doctor and therapist. I cannot emphasise that enough.

Sending all the love.

Be well. Be free

Kit K.