it’s NOT “church hurt”!!!
The “IT” I’m referring to is religious trauma. As a therapist who specialises in helping people heal and get unstuck from the far-reaching fall out of religious trauma, it’s simply not the case that religious trauma is the same as being “hurt” by the church/ religion/ adverse faith experiences. Religious trauma is not church hurt, and I’ll give a few reasons why. Before I do this, I want to call out this common way of framing the complex layers of religious trauma as either Church Hurt, or worse, church “hurt” as both harmful and misinformed. I see these “benign” quotation marks as minimising, unvalidating, and in some cases they replicate the kind of diminishing power dynamics people who have experienced religious trauma have encountered in religious environments. When I see this phrase and these minimising quotation marks used, especially by therapists who work with people who have experienced religious trauma, I get kinda fierce and protective. My Mama Bear energy comes out, because I see this minimising phrase as adding insult to injury by denying the reality I see numerous survivors live with. Church “hurt” does not lead to developing complex PTSD. It does not impact every aspect of a person’s wellbeing. Please respect survivors by telling the truth, by trusting they are the authority on their own experiences, and believing the impact of adverse religious experiences on them. Please, if you care about healing religious trauma, commit to not adding to this harm by calling it “church hurt”. That phrase, and those quotation marks, imply survivors are making a fuss about a small thing and went off in a huff cos their fragile feelings were hurt.
We know people do get hurt by each other and their communities. Friends hurt friends, colleagues hurt colleagues, pastors hurt their congregations, and congregations hurt their pastors. Being hurt is a normal and painful part of being a human. No one feels good about it. It sometimes may also bring opportunities to learn how to repair a relationship after a rupture. But when a person experiences religious trauma, they are wounded to such an extent that it has profound adverse effects on their capacity to function and their wholistic well being: mental, social, spiritual, physical, financial, or emotional. A friend of mine named it well when she said “Jude, this is a soul-level violation”. Religious trauma is experienced differently by different people, but what these stories have in common is the adverse experiences within a religious community are overwhelming and remove a person’s sense of control, safety, agency, meaning, connection and belonging. One of the primary wounds this inflicts is a loss of connection: to ourselves, others and to the world around us. It may also damage the ability to trust or connect with the Divine, if the Divine becomes intertwined with what happened and the lack of support, safety, or resources to process the depth of this harm. The correct word for this is not “hurt”. It is trauma.
Dr Hilary McBride is a leading voice in the field of recovery from religious trauma. Her book and podcast “Holy Hurt” are a valuable and accessible resource to educate yourself about this type of trauma. I highly recommend her work. In Holy Hurt, McBride defines trauma and religious trauma:
Trauma occurs when “what happened to us lingers in us. It is the big and little things that cause a fracture deep inside us and between us. It’s the things that leave us caught in a cycle of pain, avoidance and numbing”.
Religious trauma is “caused by something that the person closely associates with religion or spirituality, is inflicted by someone who is thought to be a stand in for the Divine, is said to be justified by the spiritual practice or religious beliefs, or occurs because of religious or spiritual practice” and “the post-traumatic psychobiological responses are connected to God, religion, or spirituality in some way”.
I hope that if you’ve read this far, my ponderings have added to your own thoughts and knowledge about religious trauma. This isn’t easy stuff to face and to talk about, but I am thankful more and more people are prepared to learn about and understand this growing field of trauma-informed therapy. I am committed to doing what I can to educate thoughtful people about it, and to relieving the suffering religious trauma brings. One of the core ways I do this with my clients is by asking the question “What if you believed yourself?”
It’s ok if you don’t find it helpful to call painful things that have happened to you in religious contexts trauma. Not everyone finds this language useful. So therapists, friends who care, people who are part of religious organisations, please, respect survivors by believing them and allowing them the dignity of naming their experiences as they see them.