Religious trauma syndrome how to#
Religious trauma syndrome professional#
Religious trauma syndrome series#

One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.Ĭan you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice? As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.īut the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.īut in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome? Let’s start this interview with the basics. Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

Religious trauma syndrome series#

When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Religious trauma syndrome professional#

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold - A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.ĭr. But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt.

We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.īut my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said.

Religious trauma syndrome how to#

When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior-my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.