By Janice Selbie, RPC I had no personal experience with divorce until I was 35 years old, when my mother called with an overdue, but shocking, announcement: After 43 years of marriage, my parents were splitting up. While uncomfortable, her announcement was also liberating. If my saintly mother could make Read more…
Religious Trauma Syndrome: a Summary of a talk given May 11, 2021, at the Conference on Religious Trauma By Marlene Winell If you want to respond to this article, you can email me at journeyfree.org@gmail.com To begin, let me give you a brief definition of Religious Trauma Syndrome. RTS is Read more…
As we heal from the religious message of being basically bad, questions arise about how we view ourselves now. One important process is to get in touch with the inner resources that we really do have – inner strength, wisdom, and love. We are not empty or untrustworthy regarding leadership Read more…
One of our support group members was concerned about her children getting indoctrinated when they get exposed to religion. A concept that I came across years ago and applied to my own parenting is “mediating.” Put simply, it means discussing things thoroughly with your children when they are exposed to Read more…
Religious Trauma Syndrome is now in Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_trauma_syndrome
Chances are you are here because of a concern about religious harm, recovering from an authoritarian religion, or suffering from religious trauma. You may have heard of Religious Trauma Syndrome (“RTS”), which is comparable to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD but specifically induced by Toxic Religious Experiences. RTS is a result of 1) toxic teachings and practices within the religion and 2) the trauma of leaving the religion. You can read more about it here.
Recovering from religious harm is multi-faceted and a relatively new field of study. There is a range of harm done by religion, (despite the positive contributions of healthy religion) and various levels of suffering and coping, depending on individual differences. While some people are able to walk away and most report feelings of relief and liberation, many people are deeply damaged and can carry scars for decades. Now we have a name for this damaged condition and we need to take it seriously. (more…)
General Comments I had a fantastic experience and am so thankful to finally identify what the hell I’ve been struggling with for 35 years. I felt loved, cared for, and listened to. I had a very positive, helpful, and healing experience. Very helpful and transformative program. Really excellent and wonderful Read more…
Reclaimers1, you are the pioneers. Reclaimers discard their confining religions and free their minds from the cages made in churches. I support you, I help you, but most of all, I salute you. Because it is clear to me after many years of bearing witness to the soul-wrenching work that Read more…
From this graphic, it should be clear that a child in a fundamentalist Christian environment faces a powerful array of factors influencing indoctrination. Many of these techniques are quite deliberate, such as keeping children at home for their schooling to control what they learn and don’t learn. The primary goal of sincere Christian parents is to pass on their faith, not help their child develop critical thinking to make a fully informed decision about religion. Christians do not present their offspring with literature on all the religions of the world and make field trips to temples, churches and mosques to help them decide. Yet in their theology they claim that “accepting Jesus” is a personal choice of free will and only those who reject God’s free gift of salvation will go to hell. (more…)
Julia is a reclaimer who lives in London. She is contributing poems to an upcoming anthology called “Happy Heretics: Tips for Recovering from Harmful Religion.” She is writing a memoir about growing up in a strict evangelical family and also a novel. She recently performed a number of poems, including the one below, and sent me this link. She is a great writer and you can get her humor even more when you watch the video. And be sure not to miss the poem about Lot’s wife at 6.22.
“The Visiting Speaker”
But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me serve alone? Luke 10:40
Typical. The minute there’s a man about the house
she’s off, leaving me to get on (more…)