Ask A Therapist: What does healing from trauma look like?
Does it ever end? What are some signs I AM making progress?
Like any complex trauma, healing from religious trauma is not linear. Because cults or fundamentalist religious communities tend to try to control your whole lifestyle and internal experiences, religious trauma encompasses so much: your relationships, thoughts, feelings, body, sexuality, and finances– just to name a few.
Of course, healing is a process, and there is absolutely no pressure to be perfect or completely “graduate” from the process of healing. Any baby step toward growth is worth celebrating! But it can be relieving to notice the specific ways that you HAVE made true progress.
Here are some potential signs that you’re healing from religious trauma.
RELATIONSHIPS: You are able to relate to others in an embodied, grounded way. You have taken active steps in your life to make boundaries in relationships that feel threatening, and create new ones that are safe. In these safe relationships, there is minimized anxiety about being condemned for feeling or thinking a certain way. You are aware of microaggressions / systemic injustices and do not internalize shame that belongs to others. You are able to be your true self without feeling pressured to relate in a solely savior-saved dynamic.
THOUGHTS: You are aware of the ways that your cult may have enforced certain thoughts as “bad,” “wrong,” or “from the devil.” Rather than trying to dissociate from your thoughts, you are able to notice them nonjudgmentally when they float in and out of your mind. You feel relatively embodied, whole, curious, and nonjudgmental about your thoughts, and can even identify the emotions they might create in you.
FEELINGS: You are not scared, dissociated from, or highly critical of your anger or any other emotions that were rendered “bad” and “sinful” in your cult. You are able to embrace the fullness of your emotional experiences. You feel empowered to regulate, understand, and manage big emotions, and overall have compassion for yourself in light of them.
BODY: Your body is your own. You feel generally safe in your body, and can relate to your body without objectifying it as sinful (think: “fleshly desires”), commodifying, or slut shaming. Especially if you are not cisgender, you understand and love the full, dynamic, euphoric nature of your gender identity. You see the goodness of your body and see it is FOR you, not against you.
SEXUALITY: You have processed and can understand ways that your sexuality may have been verbally abused, repressed, policed, demonized, judged, and shamed in your cult setting. You write your own narrative about your sexuality. You express, embody, and choose into your (a)sexuality in an empowered way that does not harm yourself or others. Especially if you are queer, you are able to love, accept, and incorporate the fluid uniqueness of your sexuality.
FINANCES: You are able to budget, spend, and make money according to your own true values. This may require sorting out in what ways your values are not aligned or aligned with those imposed onto you by your cult.
What do I do now?
If you feel that you are needing support healing from religious trauma, there are many steps you can take to start. Our monthly religious trauma membership offers countless resources for survivors of cults and high-control spiritual groups. If you are interested in getting professional support, you can book a free consultation with our therapists to explore online individual (CA residents only) therapy for religious trauma.
Interested in working with Helen? Book a free 30-minute consultation with our therapist matchmaker and we will see if Helen is the best fit for you! Helen offers EMDR Therapy, and Individual Therapy. Consultations are a great way to get to know our practice, policies, and see if we have a therapist on staff who would be a good therapeutic match. Consultations for therapy are for California residents only.
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
You can read more about Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy here:
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