Reading about Complex-PTSD leaves me with two distinct impressions: (1) I definitely have CPTSD, and (2) I barely relate to any of the examples. How did I get this trauma?

My parents don’t display clear indicators of toxic personality disorders, and their consistent neglect seems minor to me. My physical needs were taken care of, affection was displayed, and despite the issues, my parents were proud of me at times. My father’s lectures and moods were unpleasant, his drinking was limited to a few beers (daily), my mother fell short of fully soothing me when needed, but would still try, and so on.

Nobody at church was directly harming me (seemingly). They all had smiles and superficial presentations of well-being, offered good conversation, and stories of travel. So, at 12 years old, I became a baptized member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was told the baptism represented my commitment to God, but the commitment to the religion took precedence. However, I wouldn’t discover the true demands of the organization until my high school graduation.

The Abusive Organization

My first clear trauma happened when I was 13-14 years old, but the trauma grew out of already existing dysfunction instead of dysfunction emerging from the trauma. Let me explain.

In lieu of an individual abuser, the Jehovah’s Witnesses evenly distribute abuse and neglect by tying themselves to the abusive organizational structure of the religion. Every baptized member is forced into dysfunction by the threat of “disfellowshipment” if any of the strict moral codes are broken without “remorse,” and the judge of remorsefulness is left up to a judicial committee of three elders. What happens after disfellowshipment is public shaming and complete ostracization from the religious community. If one wants to return, they must attend every public meeting indefinitely without speaking to any other members, with limited exceptions granted to family relations.

Only very recently has the organization begun to reform due to state pressure and various lawsuits.

In short, an off-brand Sword of Damocles hovers over every baptized member, which may fall the moment they smoke a cigarette and enjoy it. Meanwhile, some abusers are actively protected by the JW’s judicial criteria. They believe that if someone is accused of wrongdoing and they don’t admit their fault, two people must witness the abuse directly to punish the wrongdoer. Meaning, anything done in private between two people can be denied, and nothing will be done. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the horrors of such a policy.

Living in alignment with such policies makes every faithful member an abuser. Period. The level of abuse may be low individually, but it compounds collectively.

Within the abusive organization, every member must develop wide-ranging trust issues, strong personas to mask normal human messiness, and many resort to covert addiction and serious abuse to maintain the facade. True love and support are virtually impossible since any confided mistake or struggle could be reported to the elders and result in disfellowshipment.

The Elders participate in a psychopathic contest to maintain purity within the congregation in order to advance in the organization. Some elders go so far as to perform surprise visits to members’ houses to ensure there aren’t Christmas trees installed or anything else “anti-Christian” lying around the house. Music tastes, dress, grooming, speech, educational advancement, and so on are regulated and policed by the elders.

Even now, after being disfellowshipped for over 10 years, if any JW I once knew finds this article, I may be labeled as an “apostate” and “mentally diseased” servant of Satan’s world, which the organization will still try to use against me to retain control.

Where Things Get Confusing

Without the abusive organizational structure, I doubt I’d have C-PTSD or PTSD today, even if I experienced all of my eventual traumas. The fracturing and distrust within my family due to organizational priorities is the primary cause of the neglect I faced. This is where my first clear trauma comes in as a telling example.

When I was around 13-14 years old, a friend of the family discovered that his daughter had been abused by another family friend’s son. The abuser, whom we’ll call Jake, was a year older than me, and though we lived states apart, I thought he was my best friend. When the news came out, and the police got involved, Jake accused me of being the abuser and that his daughter falsely accused him. Jake was eventually convicted, and I was cleared, and nobody doubted the outcome, besides my parents.

My father sat me down one day and stated his position: he and my mother would remain agnostic and support whatever decision the courts came to. This was a serious matter, and they wouldn’t take it lightly. I did not understand and remain unconvinced that I fully understand this decision. However, I can see how the organization’s extreme individualization of guilt and punishment tied into my father’s decision. He may have thought that this would serve as a character-building experience, but he may have been afraid of getting caught up in the religious fallout if I was guilty and he backed me.

At the time, I was only confused and internalized that I had done something deeply wrong without knowing it. Regardless, in a couple of weeks, I was betrayed by most of the people I loved and did not know why.

What (I think) it All Means

A lifetime of trying to live in and by the rules of an abusive organization can convince someone that betraying their son is the moral thing to do. An otherwise self-reflective, caring person can become a vehicle for abuse if the organization they belong to has an abusive structure. The ambiguity of my abusers being victims themselves and plausibly unaware of the abuse they produce is overwhelming. The only abuser I can accuse and fully blame is the set of abusive policies and organizational incentives of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion.

Sometimes, I crave the seeming simplicity of having one clearly toxic person as an abuser, but I think my experience sheds light on a largely unrecognized and invisible form of psychological abuse, organizational abuse. A bad job, political cause, religion, or hobby group can suck people into a structure that makes them abusive to others in the organization and/or at home.

Photo credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Lane Huitt

Lane Huitt is a writer located in Chicago, IL. He is currently living at a Buddhist temple and pursuing full-time meditation training. Lane writes fiction and non-fiction related to depth psychology, religion, and memoir.

For Lane’s links and contact, visit www.lanehuitt.com.

Having grown up in Texas, Christianity was the only belief system I knew, so I found the dusty Bible in the back of my closet and opened it. I was soon filled with a deep love for my faith and started researching more and more about my God. I found a profound sense of hope in believing that there was more to life than the suffering I knew and that there was a better world awaiting me. 

I went to college in a state that was far from my hometown and where I had no family. Finding that adjustment hard, I found a ministry on campus to meet new people. Everyone was welcoming, and we played all sorts of fun games each week and went on camping retreats every semester.

Without even realizing that what was happening wasn’t a healthy way of worship

With time, I desired a deeper understanding of the Bible, so I branched out of the ministry and started church-hopping around the city with my friends from the ministry. Seasons changed, and my friends started getting married and going their own ways out of state until I ended up on my own. Ultimately, my desire to find a strong faith led me to end up at a few different churches that were abusive and controlling, and I ended up enduring about six years of religious abuse at different churches without even realizing that what was happening wasn’t a healthy way of worship. At the time, I didn’t realize that even in religious communities, we must exercise caution with the people we put our hearts out to. When I was fed up with the bad experiences at one church, I didn’t give up on my search for meaning and continued to another church, putting my heart out there repeatedly. In retrospect, my vulnerability was too easy to spot, and people took advantage of that. I trusted that the leaders and other church members “knew more” than I did due to their credentials (many of them had doctorates in theology) and had the answers to life that I was so desperately seeking. So, I blindly followed them, never questioning their motives. (However, their doctrines and denominations all disagreed with each other and argued with each other, believing that their doctrines and congregation members were “superior” to the others, even though they were all Christians, which only heightened my confusion.) 

Developing Religious OCD and Living in Fear

Looking back, my experiences at those churches were very intense. What I endured was so extreme that I started to have religious OCD, where I compulsively began to recite Bible verses I memorized and prayers of repentance, continuously asking God to forgive me for how “awful” I was. My mind was constantly racing, believing that almost everything I did, said, and thought was sinful and that any ounce of joy I experienced from God was “grace” since I was such a horrible person. My apartment counter was filled with stacks of notebook paper with all the verses I repetitively wrote out to memorize so that I could recite them in my head whenever I felt the need to repent throughout my day. I had numerous chapters of the Bible memorized, mostly ones on forgiveness and sin, because I thought that to appease God and avoid eternal damnation, I had to be completely forgiven for how awful I was, and I thought the people in my life who thought negatively of me had to forgive me for the “sins” I committed against them (I use “sins” in quotes because, in all these situations that I thought I was the one in the wrong, I was actually the victim). Being involved in these places also made me adopt even more self-guilt and blame than was already present from all the trauma I had endured, and I started to believe that the things I experienced in these religious communities were some form of punishment for who I was and that I deserved to be punished by God. I started to believe that maybe God didn’t really love me and that I needed to spend my time “working off” my sins and changing all the things about me that were “wrong.” All these thoughts were swirling in my head at a hundred miles per hour each day as I dealt with full-time work and school, making life and focusing on my personal goals even more difficult. 

After years of believing that these religious people were there to help me heal, I realized that was the last thing they wanted to do. They didn’t actually love me or care about my well-being. They were trying to control and manipulate me. They were trying to strip away my true essence, tell me I was never good enough, and “save my soul.” They just wanted to believe that they “saved” (who they thought) was a horrible, wretched person from her sinful ways and force her into the person that their God truly desired her to be. They told me I had to memorize this, read that, pray this way, give away my hard-earned money, throw out my closet, and buy the clothes they wanted me to wear. They even told me that, because I was a woman, I had to shut up and couldn’t open my mouth to ask my pastor any questions I had about the Bible.

I cried for over a week after a 60-year-old married man told me I was “temptation” for him, believing that was my fault and that I still wasn’t “covered up” enough. In these environments, my duty was to sit in the back of the building, look pretty, shut my mouth, and donate my money. Otherwise, I wasn’t good enough for God, and I wouldn’t make it into heaven. These things I mention are just the tip of a traumatic iceberg that I still hold tightly within me, among other traumas that have not left my lips.  

They did a fantastic job at convincing me of how awful I was and that I needed to change literally everything about myself. I needed to find my voice again. I needed to find God’s voice, too. I’m not even sure if there is a God anymore. If there is a God, I can’t picture that God as a kind, loving God. I can only picture the vengeful God of the Old Testament, ready to smite down an entire people for the smallest sin. The God these people taught me about is not a God I can worship. 

Not All Religious People Are Safe People

It’s a common myth that only weak people fall victim to religious abuse. Many doctors, lawyers, and well-educated people in the world congregated next to me and did the same things we were all told to do to gain admission to heaven. The psychological tactics are designed to terrify and control people. It’s unfortunate that some people in religious power prey on people desperately seeking answers and purpose. Looking back, I was convinced that they had the answers and the true path to heaven. I can’t believe how many years I spent terrified that God would throw me into hell because I wasn’t meeting these people’s man-made standards. 

I doubt I would have ended up in these situations if I hadn’t been a severe trauma victim. It was difficult for me to see the red flags at the time because I was desperately seeking a deeper meaning to life and an understanding of God. I don’t understand the motivation they had to control their vulnerable victims, but we were probably the only things in their lives that they could control, and they took the opportunity to do so. While their followers groveled at their feet for God’s forgiveness, they lived in a bubble, reminding themselves that they were above everyone else, immune to the very things they criticized. Through all of this, all the old wounds from my past trauma were wrenched wide open again, and I was living in a dystopian world, thinking that the big man in the sky hated my guts.

My heart hurts for other survivors of religious abuse. My heart hurts for those who think that they’re completely awful because of what “religious” people have said or done to them. 

It Only Made Me Stronger

I am slowly returning to my core self, and I will be stronger once I fully discard those old belief patterns. I’ve completely dissociated from many of those years and have no recollection of so many memories due to that dissociation. I no longer feel the need to try and change myself to please people who will never be pleased, and if people are hateful or make me uncomfortable, then they don’t belong in my life. If they want to judge me as a sinner, think I’m going to hell, or believe that their God smiles more favorably on them, then so be it. Their arrogance no longer intimidates me, it just saddens me. As if anyone has the right to decide who is worthy of God’s love and who isn’t. That’s not the kind of religious life that I want to live. And I know that’s not how the Jesus they claim to love lived either. I believe the stories of Christ found in the Bible are very beautiful and powerful, but it’s unfortunate that so many that claim to represent the love of Christ are incredibly hateful and spend their time trying to indoctrinate other people into adopting their same arrogance while being financially compensated to do so. I do not believe all Christians are bad people; I surround myself with many Christians who are the most loving people I have ever met. But what I realized for myself was that the Christians I was around all those years only loved me when I was conforming to their standards, donating my money, and submitting to their ruthless control.

I still believe spirituality can heal many people, and it is up to them to believe in what they choose. I do not judge another person for what they choose as long as they are a good person and do not use their religious beliefs to hurt or control others. My faith looks very different from what it previously did and is much healthier. From now on, I will pursue a spiritual life that works for me and does not keep me terrified, anxious, and judgmental of others. I will pursue a personal spirituality that does not take away from my core self, which enriches those who love me. I enjoy having conversations with people of all faiths to learn more about the world and understand how their faith helps them. I admire people who have a strong spirituality for themselves and do not allow the opinions, actions, or beliefs of others to affect their own beliefs. I also don’t judge others who choose not to believe in any higher power and find other ways to manage life in this tough world. Everyone is on their own timetable, and it’s unfortunate that many people judge others through the prism of their unbending sense of belief. While everyone has biases, we need to remember that everyone has a story and reasons as to why they have certain beliefs, and there is no way for one human being to understand another human being’s full story.

“Live and let live” is a philosophy that makes life much easier. It took me so long to adopt that philosophy and stop being so hard on myself, to stop believing all the dogmatic lies planted in my head, and start examining the abusive things that were done to me in the name of religion. It was hard, but I can finally say I’ve escaped those dystopian worlds I was in all those years and am no longer threatened by the people I once thought were so powerful.

And those people who stripped away my true essence during that time? They pose to the public as the representatives, leaders, and mouthpieces of a “loving God” and invite people into their houses of worship to do these things. However, all I hear are the words of Jesus when he admonished the Pharisees that they are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside, yet on the inside are “full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” 

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Natalie Rose

My name is Natalie, and I am a survivor of about 13 years of absolute psychological torture from Complex PTSD symptoms. For the longest time, I thought I was inherently sick and broken beyond repair. I spent over a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it.

♡ What is Complex PTSD? ♡

Complex PTSD symptoms come from severe, prolonged, and numerous incidents of trauma, typically of a relational nature. Symptoms can come from any type of trauma, though, and the trauma doesn’t necessarily have to stem from childhood — adults can develop CPTSD as well. Trauma can damage the brain and shrink the hippocampus, causing many of the symptoms of CPTSD. I decided to go public with my story to be a voice for the voiceless. There are too many survivors being told CPTSD is a lifelong sentence, and they are not being given the tools they need to overcome their symptoms.

♡ My Story ♡

I endured multiple types of traumas starting at around age thirteen, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty. Some of these situations forced me to switch environments. My body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things for others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did. The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in—religion and the medical system itself—caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident.

♡ My Struggles to Find Answers ♡

What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to manage my symptoms for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain.

♡ Finding My Own Healing ♡

I am excited to share tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome things like dissociation, flashbacks, sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations.

I’m so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable. I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. I hope to encourage other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story.

♡ Personal Blog ♡

To learn more about my healing journey, please visit my personal blog, “Little Cabin Life,” at:
littlecabinlife.com

– This a longer article than usual, I wanted to describe my experience as thoroughly as possible –

In 2014, after a traumatic breakup, my daughter moved in with her Dad, with very little money and being officially homeless, I was referred, by Lewisham Council, to Certitude, specifically to their “Shared Lives Scheme”: “Shared Lives is a quality alternative to residential care settings where people live as part of a family.” The page reads as follows: Shared Lives Carers support people within their own homes, either in a long-term arrangement, day support, or on a respite basis, which may be a day, weekend, or a few weeks at a time. People benefit from consistent support from people who know them well and build positive relationships and friendships.”

To be fair, looking at their website now, things have changed, since 2014. The scheme, back then, entailed me being paired up with a “Living Carer.” I was to stay with her for up to two years, depending on my progress. It was a time for me to recuperate and to live independently again, with all the support I needed.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what happened. The day I moved in, I was broken, I didn’t stop crying. I had just lost my home. I wanted to die, every single day. One of the first things M (my” career”) asked me was if “I’d like to join them, on Sunday.” I didn’t understand, what she meant. So, she added: “To church?” I politely declined the offer. At the time I was a practicing Buddhist. 

The next day, as I couldn’t stop crying, I poured my heart out to her. She got talking about her Faith, and, as the curious being I am, I asked her some questions, informing her I had a different faith. Her passion inspired me to go back to my own practice. The next day, we had another chat. She got the Bible out and cited some passages. I felt uncomfortable. I felt she was trying to convince me to join her. I felt it was inappropriate for her – as a carer, to open her Bible. My past training in the homelessness sector taught me not to talk about religion or not to indoctrinate patients. As a support worker, of any kind, you keep your beliefs to yourself. It is called being professional.

This was confirmed to me when they invited me to have dinner with them, Earthquakes just shook Nepal and I was glad someone I knew just come back to the UK, a few days before. When M’s husband, A screamed: “This happened because THEY don’t believe in THE ONE TRUE GOD!!” I left, disgusted the living room.

 “In a few words: she didn’t want me there.”

The other thing M was insisting on was that I save money to get my own TV so I could watch in the privacy of my bedroom. Once, I settled with them to watch TV. She made me feel very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, I left quickly. In the bedroom I was offered, there was a broken computer desk that I had to get rid of, myself. I asked for a replacement or a small shelf. I never got a replacement. There was a big wardrobe, with a door off its hinges. This was fixed when I was out, without any notice. There seemed to be a few excuses to get into my room when I wasn’t there. They had a living room, with a big dining table but they put stools for me to eat at the kitchen top. The kitchen was small and there was barely any space for 2 people to be in there. I was given one tiny cupboard, for my own food and kitchen ware. I wasn’t allowed to leave a few essentials in the bathroom, such as my soap and toothbrush. In a few words: she didn’t want me there.

I noticed she kept letters inviting me, and herself to attend monthly residents’ groups. She watched everything I did. I was given a few chores but, it was never done properly. The house was cluttered and messy but, I was the problem.

She would forget my laundry days and had to ask her husband if I could do my laundry. She was supposed to cook healthy meals when I first arrived but only bought me microwave meals. 

On a regular basis, she would let the electricity meter run out, and she would be out all day. Turned out, she had a full time job and, adding all her church activities, she was barely in the house. Her full time job was supposed to care for me, to take me out, to provide a safe environment for my recovery. It was evident, I was extra money for her.

She told me to “think positive.” When I replied I didn’t like this piece of advice, she retorted: “What else am I supposed to say?” This was after spending the afternoon in A&E, felling suicidal and being given Valium to calm me down.

Once, as I was swiping the floor, I found a £10 note in a shoe. I was puzzled. What was it doing in one of her shoes? My intuition told me she was testing me: will I take the £10 note? I decided to leave it there, so it was visible. After a couple of days, it was still there, so I told her: “There is £10 in your shoe? isn’t that weird?” The way she feigned her surprise showed me everything I needed to know. It had been a trap.

Another lady arrived a month or so after me. The small cupboard in the kitchen was divided between us. Same thing in the fridge. We had on tiny shelf each. She too had to squeeze in the kitchen to eat. She had a smaller room than I had. She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. She later was moved to another property within the scheme.

I had complained about things feeling off to S, the manager since I had first moved in. I was told it is always difficult to live in someone’s home and having to adhere to certain rules. It wasn’t the point I was making. The manager was appalled M left us with no electricity, on a regular basis. M was warned but, it still happened. There was talk about moving me to another property. It didn’t happen. I discovered my “flatmate” was moved to the same property I was offered within my first months of living with M and A, but never got to move into. I was unhappy about this.

I kept a record of all the occasions I was called to clean the mess that wasn’t mine. My every move was monitored. I felt persecuted. I WAS persecuted. It escalated until I started to seriously battle with thoughts of self-harm. I acted upon them too. Soon after, I wrote to the manager, again, informing her of my struggles. A meeting with M, herself, and myself was scheduled. I added if they didn’t move me as soon as possible I will fill in a formal complaint. Why wasn’t I moved in the property my flatmate was offered?

“S told me M wanted to punish me, she wanted to harm me with this comment. “

During this meeting, M feigned to be choked at my anger (Didn’t you know individuals diagnosed with BPD are angry monsters?) I never seemed happy and willing to fit in. S brought up the time she read the Bible to me; M challenged me “Which passage of the Bible?” “I don’t know”, I replied, “it is a big book”. “We are a family!” She exclaimed. I flinched! “No, we aren’t.”

 M brushed off the incident of her husband shouting passionately “Those people deserved to die in earthquakes because they didn’t believe in the ONE TRUE GOD.” “I cannot talk for A.” Same as the time A told me off for not picking up THEIR soap off the shower floor.

At the end of the meeting, M declared haughtily: “Well, I didn’t want to bring it up but, your bedroom is very smelly!” She made it sound as if I was one of the most disgusting people in the world. I felt as if I had just been slapped.

I was left alone with the manager, once M left. S told me M wanted to punish me, she wanted to harm me with this comment. She had been in my bedroom, to check if I was comfortable: “It didn’t smell and it was clean and orderly.” S finally through M. She also worked out M was working full time when she wasn’t supposed to.

“How many people, such as M, are using these care schemes, offered full training, to indoctrinated vulnerable individuals into their places of worship? Or just to make themselves feel good and powerful? Or just to get extra money? “

Thankfully, I was moved into my own supported accommodation, soon after. M and A gave me a hard time until the end: “Make sure you leave things as you found them!!” They repeated and again. On the last day, I just shouted at A: “I am leaving!!! Let me be!!” Maybe I should have brought back the broken desk and gotten the wardrobe door off its hinges.

Waiting for my friend to help me move my things, I took a walk. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. When the last box was in the car, M asked if I was coming back to clean the bedroom floor and give her my last weekly payment of £20. The money was on the table. I said: “Sure, I’ll come back.” I left the key and never came back.

S sent me a review/ feedback a few weeks after I departed from the scheme. “Your concerns have been taken seriously. M will no longer work for us.” I never sent this feedback letter: I wanted to put all of this behind me.

10 years later, I still have nightmares of becoming homeless and moving into an awful place. I still see M, in my dreams (Nightmares) regularly. I saw her a couple of times in the neighborhood. I still feel anger at the abuse I endured in her “care.” And I am till mad at the way it was mishandled. This is the reason why I am writing about this now.

Even though, I spoke out, loud and clear, it took too long for my warnings to be taken seriously. It shouldn’t have happened. S was a lovely woman, but I wished she had listened to my concerns much earlier.

How many people, such as M, are using these care schemes, offered full training, to then indoctrinate vulnerable individuals into their places of worship? Or just to make themselves feel good and powerful? Or just to get extra money?

I know for a fact that M was sacked from Certitude but, before I left, I saw files on the living room table to join Bromley’s ( South East London – UK) own scheme. I wonder if she is working still, in this capacity? Is she still abusing vulnerable people, in the community? Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was.

I am also sharing this to let others know: that if you are mistreated, talk to someone. I hope and pray someone listens to you and protects you. I know too well we can speak up but, unfortunately, it doesn’t mean we will be listened to and protected. We all deserve a safe place to land, so we can recover from whatever hardships we’ve experienced.

Take gentle care of yourselves.

Sylvie

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Sylvie Rouhani

Writer – Blogger – Poet – Mental Health and Child Abuse Activist

Deputy Editor and Journalist for Taxpayers Against Poverty

Author of The Blossoming Lotus”

https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/blossoming-lotus

New Website: Breaking The Cycles

https://breakingthecycles.co.uk/

breakingthecycles.co.uk

Ultimately, it is a personal identity that takes a beating in the aftermath of trauma and where the agency, dignity, and imagination of a flourishing life are short-circuited. 

As survivors, we know this all too well. 

I just completed a year-long integrative project for my Master’s Degree that explored how women rewrite their lives in the aftermath of religious trauma. This has been very personal for me, as my own story of trauma served as the catalyst and the backdrop for this work.

Institutional Control

For this project, I had the privilege to interview nine people who were raised in strict religious systems that were riddled with misogyny and sexist ideas about gender. The indoctrination and tactics of control over these young girls produced classic symptoms of complex trauma. By adulthood, the interviewees had a distorted sense of themselves, severe passivity, trouble with decision-making, and a lack of imagination to consider opportunities outside the rigid ideal someone else had created.  

Their stories reflected my own journey as someone raised in a religious system that demanded conformity of beliefs, thoughts, and actions to such a degree that I had little sense of my own identity. The institutional demands for silence and conformity meant we had to hide the parts of ourselves that others disapproved of including ambitions, desires, and emotions. Those who couldn’t identify with ideal womanhood either internalized the idea that there was something wrong with them, or they worked hard to keep their true selves a secret.

Interviewees reported taking years to recover what was lost in those years of captivity, and most acknowledged, even at midlife or older, that they are still working through their identity issues. 

For most of us, healing comes in fits and starts and in tiny awakenings. 

Those coming out of trauma are desperate for wholeness and hopeful they can return to a semblance of normalcy. But instead of returning to an old draft of ourselves, the key seems to be to revise and write new narratives. 

A Complex Healing

Judith Herman’s work on Complex Trauma has been instrumental in this work and helped me connect the dots between my experiences within religion and the trauma I feel in my body. Her research shows that a victim of chronic trauma may feel like she is irrevocably changed or she may lose the sense that she has any self at all.

Even after release from captivity, the victim cannot assume her former identity. Whatever new identity she develops in freedom must include the memory of her enslaved self. Her page of her body must include a body that can be controlled and violated. Her image of herself in relation to others must include a person who can lose and be lost to others. And her moral ideas must coexist with the knowledge of the capacity for evil, both within others and within herself. If, under duress, she has betrayed her own principles or has sacrificed other people, she now has to live with the image of herself as an accomplice of the perpetrator, a “broken” person. The result for most victims is a contaminated identity. Victims may be preoccupied with shame, self loathing, and a sense of failure. 

On first reading, Herman’s words feel bleak; suggesting that maybe healing isn’t possible. But as I reflect longer, I see the truth and the beauty that lies in the reality of our lives as trauma survivors. We cannot return to before.

For those of us raised in traumatic situations, there is no ‘before’

We can work through the shame, the sense of failure that works to contaminate, and gain skills of resilience and agency. But what of wearing our scars without shame? Our trauma is part of our identity as survivors, but often we spend so much time trying to escape the ugly parts we don’t even notice the way they have woven into our identities.

I also see in Herman’s words something I haven’t seen before –  a call to embrace the beauty of the marred body/spirit. Instead of trying to escape to a new identity free from the horror, how might I re-imagine myself with the scars? How do I make peace with the complexity of my own moral ideals in tension with my (and others’) capacity for evil? I have been living with a contaminated identity because I haven’t been able to conceive a more complex (and true) image of myself.

New Narratives

I am currently playing around with writing as a metaphorical framework for how to think about recovery. More than a cognitive exercise, this is a creative and artistic path that allows us the freedom to explore, play, erase, and rewrite as we hone the concept of our true selves. This framework has brought an important energy to my journey and gives me room to imagine and embrace the complexity of who I am.

By choosing to write and rewrite our lives, either literally or metaphorically, we are standing in protest against the domination of religious experience that values absolutes, reason and right answers over imagination, messiness and the lives of people. Writing new lives is a way to exercise and grow our agency for the sake of our own liberation, to break free from the rigid constraints that have kept us from our true selves.

For those of us learning to trust ourselves and giving ourselves permission to play with ideas and identity, we can rewrite our lives with conviction and abandon and reimagine a God-human story that feels more real to our experience and can work as a catalyst for a new way to think about ourselves and the world. This new way forward means writing for ourselves with our own voices, ambitions, and desires and not simply letting others write our story.

References – Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery, (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 94.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Beth Alford

Beth Alford is a communication strategist, writer and independent scholar. Her writing combines her personal experiences of complex trauma with academic work in theology, religious trauma, culture and gender studies. You can find more of Beth’s work at thebethalford.com.

thebethalford.com

So what happens when it’s religion itself that is the source of distress and trauma? 

Researchers have studied harm and abuse inside cults for years, but these environments were usually differentiated from mainline religious groups. With new reports of abuse and trauma coming out of Christian churches in recent years, people are looking deeper at the similarity between high-control Christian groups and cults, and when affinity to doctrine crosses a line and becomes dangerous. 

Increasingly, researchers, clinicians, and survivors are calling this religious trauma.

When I first began researching this topic I felt uneasy about using such a strong term. After all, not all religion inflicts trauma. Even within the same denominations or churches, people experience religion differently, similar to when two people go off to war and only one develops PTSD.

But, after learning about complex trauma and listening to dozens of stories through research interviews, I have come to believe that religious trauma is definitely something that is bringing harm to a great deal of people.   

Religious Trauma

Dr. Marlene Winell was the first person to use the term Religious Trauma Syndrome to describe the wide array of emotional issues people face as they leave authoritarian religions; psychological harm including fear, anger, depression, loss of self, agency, and decision-making. 

After her own experience coming out of fundamentalism, Winell began to notice similar issues with her therapy patients and has focused her entire practice on helping victims and training other professionals in how to work with religious trauma ever since.. 

Religious trauma is different from spiritual abuse, though it can include abuse. It refers to the overlying religious system that is characterized by captivity, and psychological domination and results in an erosion of the personality, characteristics of Complex PTSD outlined by Judith Herman in her groundbreaking work, Trauma and Recovery. 

Herman introduces the concept of complex trauma that goes beyond single event-driven experiences to include prolonged and repeated events that create a psychological impact of subordination inside institutional, political, and domestic systems. 

When looking through Herman’s prism of captivity, domination and personality erosion, there is a clear connection between the symptoms of religious trauma and Complex PTSD. 

Captivity

For Herman, complex trauma takes place in captivity where individuals are in a prison of sorts and under the control of a perpetrator. Perpetrators might be a parent, partner, leader, organization, government, or even God who becomes the dominant force in the life of the victim and shapes her world and her identity. 

People can be held captive without bars, windows, or guns through psychological tactics or economic forces. This type of coercion can show up in obvious ways such as in governmental or police states, but also in more subtle ways inside families and religious institutions. 

Psychological Domination

Inside a system of captivity, perpetrators exert domination through techniques designed to disempower and disconnect individuals from themselves and others. Often in religion, the tactics include Biblical literalism, fear, and shame. The subtle nature of this domination is what makes it so pervasive and dangerous because it allows people who wouldn’t otherwise condone violence or abuse to dismiss it or turn a blind eye. 

Erosion of Personality

The result of captivity and psychological domination is a perversion of identity where there is a loss of self and helplessness, passivity, entrapment to the past, intractable depression, somatic complaints, and smoldering anger. 

People subjected to prolonged, repeated trauma develop an insidious, progressive form of post-traumatic stress disorder that invades and erodes the personality. While a victim of chronic trauma may feel after the event that he is ‘not herself’, the victim of chronic trauma may feel herself be changed irrevocably, or she may lose the sense that she has any self at all. (Herman)

In my research, I heard story after story from people who felt this profound identity loss or distortion coming out of Christian fundamentalism. 

Connecting the Dots

Herman’s categories of captivity, psychological domination, and the erosion of personality are evident in Marlene Winell’s descriptions of religious trauma indicated in the chart below. 

This is, of course, an oversimplified summary but is an important primer for those beginning to make connections with what their body is telling them and the current trauma science.  

Religious Trauma Resources

The field of religious trauma is exploding and new resources are constantly being created. For more information or to connect with a professional, you can access these religious trauma resources. 

________________________

REFERENCES

• Almendros, Carmen, Manuel Gámez-Guadix, Álvaro Rodríguez-Carballeira, and José Antonio Carrobles. “Assessment of psychological abuse in manipulative groups.” International Journal of Cultic Studies 2 (2011).
• Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
• Joshua Pease, “The Sin of silence”, Washington Post Online, 2028, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/05/31/feature/the-epidemic-of-denial-about-sexual-abuse-in-the-evangelical-church/
• Winell, Marlene. Leaving the Fold. Apocryphile Press, 2001.
• Image credit: Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Beth Alford

Beth Alford is a communication strategist, writer and independent scholar. Her writing combines her personal experiences of complex trauma with academic work in theology, religious trauma, culture and gender studies. You can find more of Beth’s work at thebethalford.com.

thebethalford.com