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ยป Home ยป Spiritual Calling

Religious Trauma: 23 Dark Signs & How to Heal

by Aletheia Luna ยท Updated: Apr 3, 2025 ยท 84 Comments

Image of a fallen angel on a beach experiencing religious trauma
Religious trauma quote by Aletheia Luna

If thereโ€™s any topic that has impacted my life so deeply โ€“ and yet Iโ€™ve been putting off writing for over ten years โ€“ itโ€™s religious trauma.

The topic of religious trauma is such an inflammatory topic, and one that has harmed so many people, that Iโ€™m going to try and approach it as delicately as I can.

Religious trauma is pervasive and more widespread than I believe most people are aware of. After all, the foundation of most modern societies are based on religious ideals, whether you live in the east or west.ย 


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So to get this out of the way before I begin:

Do I think all religion is evil? Am I an anti-theist? No. Religion serves a valuable function in society by emphasizing social connectedness, support, values, and higher ideals. For many people, religion is what makes life worth living, and it has helped them in their darkest times.

Do I believe all religious people are horrible? No. In fact, many religious people are some of the kindest and most generous souls youโ€™ll ever meet.

Do I โ€œhateโ€ Christianity? (The religion I was brought up in.) No, I donโ€™t hate Christianity. I can see the value in this belief system, and I respect and admire figures such as Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary (who I still feel an affinity with).

But hereโ€™s the thing:

Religion, with all of its underlying value, can easily become something destructive, abusive, perverted, and traumatizing.ย 

In this article, Iโ€™m going to explore the dark side of religion as a religious trauma survivor, and also how to heal these wounds from a deeper perspective.


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Please note: In the interests of keeping this a safe space, and to respect my own personal boundaries, any comments deemed abusive, harmful, or proselytizing will be removed. Thank you for respecting the healing journeys of others.ย 

Also, this article is written from an ex-Christian perspective, but it applies to anyone from any religion. If your unique experiences of religious trauma aren’t mentioned here, I apologize โ€“ they are just as valid. I can only write from what I have personally experienced.

Trigger warning: This article contains mention of sexual abuse, murder-suicide, self-harm, suicidal ideation, physical abuse, and other triggering topics. Proceed with caution.ย 

In the interests of being trauma-sensitive, if at any point you feel overwhelmed by reading this article, please stop, take a break, and return to this page later (you can always bookmark it). And be sure to share this article with anyone who you feel might benefit.

Table of contents

  • What is Religious Trauma?
  • My Experience With Religious Trauma
  • Religion vs. Spiritualityย 
  • 23 Signs Youโ€™re Experiencing Religious Trauma
  • Examples of Religious Abuse
  • Religious Trauma and Spiritual Awakening
  • How to Heal From Religious Trauma
    • (i) Journaling โ€“ simple but powerful
    • (ii) Mindfulness and self-compassion
    • (iii) Spend lots of time in nature
    • (iv) Make friends with your inner child
    • (v) Mindful shadow work
    • (vi) Internal family systems โ€“ or working with your inner parts
    • (vii) Non-duality โ€“ or seeing through the separate self

What is Religious Trauma?

Image of a religious book held up to the light responsible for inducing religious trauma

Religious trauma refers to the deeply felt ongoing mental and emotional suffering one experiences at the hands of a religious belief system. Experiencing religious trauma can happen to anyone of any faith at any point in their lives โ€“ and it can be cumulative or sudden. In other words, religious trauma can slowly build through a personโ€™s faith journey or it can occur as a sudden shock such as through a public display of humiliation, sexual abuse, or another unexpected painful incident.

My Experience With Religious Trauma

Image of an angel staring into hell within a church, symbolic of religious trauma

Religious trauma for me was a cumulative experience that reached its peak at the age of 19 when I decided to finally cut ties with the fundamentalist religion of my childhood (and unfortunately my blood family alongside it).ย 

Since birth, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church known as the Church of Christ who prided themselves on a strict adherence to biblical tenets. I was taught that the CoC was the โ€œone true church,โ€ that those who belonged to it were โ€œspecial and chosen,โ€ and that all other beliefs (including other Christian denominations) and belief systems were false โ€“ and that those believing in them would end up burning in hell for all eternity.

I was indoctrinated with purity culture ideals of staying a virgin until marriage โ€“ that a woman wasnโ€™t allowed to speak in church, couldnโ€™t be a leader or โ€œelder,โ€ or do anything other than be a good homemaker and โ€œsubmitโ€ to her husband. I wasnโ€™t permitted to cut my hair, celebrate Christmas or Easter (or any other โ€œnon-biblicalโ€ holidays), or be overly โ€œworldlyโ€ because I was taught to believe that โ€œSatan prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.โ€

Imagine being taught, as a tiny little girl, that not only is the Devil always out to try and get you, but that if youโ€™re โ€œbadโ€ in any way, youโ€™ll suffer for all eternity in hellfire in the worst possible agony you could ever imagine? Thatโ€™s a pretty fucked up thing to teach a young child.

Being indoctrinated at a very young age, for almost two decades with paranoid, bigoted, and fear-based beliefs about the world, it was no wonder that my mental health took a nosedive in my later adolescence. When I began to question why an โ€œall-loving Godโ€ would send people to burn in hell forever if they didnโ€™t โ€œfollow what He wanted,โ€ my world began to crack apart. Just like in The Truman Show, my whole understanding of reality began to collapse and crumble beneath me. Reading the Bible three times over didnโ€™t solve any of my problems either โ€“ it made the situation worse.

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I remember sitting in church during a sermon one Sunday, feeling the deeply disturbing sensation that my soul was slowly dying. Sudden thoughts of murder-suicide would flash through my fragmented mind as disturbing bloody images of stabbing the preacher over and over again โ€“ and then killing myself โ€“ would burst into my awareness. (I later learned that these thoughts signalled the emergence of my heavily repressed and rejected Shadow Self.)

This drive toward self-harm and suicidal-ideation began as a teenager and continued until a little after I left the religion, but thankfully it never resulted in anything serious.

Thereโ€™s a lot more that I could share about enduring physical abuse (aka., โ€œbiblicalโ€ punishment) with a horse whip, spiritual gaslighting, emotional manipulation, social isolation, learning that my favorite Christian friend was a child molester, and the other nuances of an immature and destructive belief system โ€“ but Iโ€™ll try to keep this simple.ย 

I donโ€™t blame my parents because I know that they were trying to do the best they could with the level of awareness they had. Theyโ€™re good people deep down with admirable qualities. Iโ€™m sure religion felt like a soothing balm for them and they wanted to instil some kind of values into their children. My childhood wasnโ€™t all bad and there were certainly good parts, and wonderful qualities my parents instilled into me (like creativity and a good work ethic). But religion for me was a horror show that Iโ€™m still overcoming to this very day.

Unfortunately, the result of freeing myself from this religious trauma, also meant that I had to become a black sheep and cut ties with my blood family, who were conditioned by their beliefs to see me as a โ€œheathen,โ€ โ€œtraitor to the faith,โ€ โ€œsinner,โ€ and so on.ย 

I didnโ€™t leave in a perfect way. I wish I had said goodbye to my siblings early on that morning I grabbed my bags and left. I wish I could have been there to support my little sister and meet my third sister who was born a few years after I left. But returning to that environment would mean deep self-betrayal, threatening my mental, emotional, and spiritual sanity. Exposing myself to the very situation that caused such deep trauma in me to begin with is not something Iโ€™m willing to do again.ย 

My story is certainly not the worst out there โ€“ there are so many others who have experienced far worse than I have. And while I am a victim, I refuse to stay as one. Iโ€™m a survivor and now a thriver. And this deep pain is perhaps the main reason why Iโ€™m drawn to the symbol of the wolf, writing for and running this website, and exploring the shadows that obscure our Inner Light.ย 

Religion vs. Spiritualityย 

Image of two hands reaching out to each other

I just want to quickly clarify that this article is focused on religious trauma, not spiritual trauma. Religion and spirituality are two different paths. Hereโ€™s the difference, which I define in my article entitled Spirituality vs Religion:

Spirituality is connecting to the Divine through your own personal experience. It is primarily concerned with finding, experiencing, and embodying oneโ€™s true spiritual nature.

Religion is connecting to the Divine through someone elseโ€™s experience. It is primarily concerned with believing in, following, and obeying the rules created by a certain Deity or spiritual teacher.

If you think you fit into the spiritual definition more than the religious one, and youโ€™re wanting to look more into spiritual abuse specifically, I recommend checking out the following articles:

  • What Is Spiritual Bypassing? (Beware of These 10 Types)
  • 15 Toxic Signs of a Spiritual Narcissist
  • 11 Deceptive Spiritual Traps Sabotaging Your Growth

23 Signs Youโ€™re Experiencing Religious Trauma

Image of a woman experiencing trauma and psychosis

How do you know whether you’re experiencing religious trauma? Most likely, youโ€™ll need to self-diagnose as this term isnโ€™t listed in the DSM-5 (which is not saying that listing it as a mental disorder is actually always that helpful).

Trust in your own experience. These signs arenโ€™t meant to โ€œdiagnoseโ€ you in any way (as Iโ€™m not a psychologist or mental health professional). But if you can relate to some of them, chances are that you do indeed suffer from religious trauma:

  1. Chronic feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy
  2. Persistent anxiety or panic
  3. Existential depression or melancholy
  4. Self-hatred or self-loathing
  5. Perfectionism
  6. Obsessive compulsive tendencies
  7. Weak sense of self
  8. Poor personal boundaries
  9. Nightmares or sleep disturbance
  10. Diminished social connections and loss of community
  11. Difficulty maintaining friendships, relationships, etc.
  12. Sexual dysfunction (excessive or under active sex drive)
  13. Persistent loneliness and feelings of abandonment
  14. Strong addictive tendencies
  15. Fear of experiencing joy or pleasure
  16. Difficulty with self-expression and speaking up
  17. Intrusive thoughts
  18. Rigid black-or-white thinking and troubles accepting alternative viewpoints
  19. Hypervigilance and feeling like one is being constantly watched and judged
  20. Inability to trust oneself and oneโ€™s gut instincts
  21. Difficulty trusting in other people and the Divine
  22. Struggles with being self-autonomous and making decisions
  23. Deep-seated feelings of shame and guilt about normal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

This isnโ€™t an exhaustive list of religious trauma signs, and if any others come up for you that arenโ€™t listed, trust that theyโ€™re just as relevant as what Iโ€™ve shared above.

Examples of Religious Abuse

Image of a devil possessing a woman symbolic of religious trauma

What about specific examples of religious abuse?

As I said at the start of this article, religious abuse can be both cumulative (aka., happen over a long period of time and in subtle/overt ways) or be sudden (due to a specific incident).

The examples of religious abuse below donโ€™t cover all of the nuances of this complex beast, but I hope they give you a clearer idea of how religious abuse can appear:


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  • A woman is shamed for dressing a certain way and told that sheโ€™s sinning against God for displaying her body.
  • A man is judged and ostracized by his religious community for his attraction toward other men.
  • A family cuts off their child when the child leaves the religion.
  • A person seeks help from their religious elders about marital abuse, only to be told that itโ€™s their lack of faith that is the problem, not the other partyโ€™s sexual/physical/emotional abuse.
  • A child is physically, mentally, or emotionally punished for doing or saying something that is perceived to be against the parentโ€™s beliefs.
  • A religious community pressures and coerces an older person to donate more money than they can afford to give to their evangelical efforts.
  • A charismatic religious leader uses his/her position of power to gain sexual favors in the name of โ€œGod.โ€
  • A person is publicly humiliated for a perceived โ€œsin.โ€
  • A child is raped and the parents and religious authorities donโ€™t believe his or her word, pretending it didnโ€™t happen.
  • A person is emotionally blackmailed and gaslighted into questioning their sanity when bringing up reasonable questions about certain religious beliefs.ย 
  • A mother experiences control and intimidation tactics when she stops exposing her children to a belief system.
  • A fatherโ€™s mental health problems are minimized or ridiculed by religious leaders, and he undergoes inadequate treatment from an incompetent โ€œreligious counselor.โ€
  • A religious leader uses scripture to justify sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, or otherwise violent and destructive viewpoints.

Can you think of any more examples? If so, share them in the comments!

Religious Trauma and Spiritual Awakening

Image of an illuminated person sitting in the dark

Going through religious trauma is what led to my own Dark Night of the Soul and subsequent spiritual awakening โ€“ and if youโ€™re going through this experience, you might be called to the same path as well.

Spiritual awakening is what happens when we begin questioning our beliefs, habits, social conditioning, and everything that feels fake or false in our lives. A deep hunger and longing begins to burn within us to find truth, freedom, relief from suffering, and inner peace. We may crave to find what the meaning of life is, what our purpose is, and ultimately, who we truly are on a primordial level (our True Nature).

In other words, spiritual awakening emerges as a deep inner call from the Soul, demanding that we โ€œwake up,โ€ walk our own paths, and listen to our Soulโ€™s calling to find Home.

Not everyone is ready for or interested in spirituality after going through the horrible roller coaster of religious trauma. In fact, many people feel drawn to atheism, and thatโ€™s fine. Sometimes atheism is the most healing and empowering path for a person.ย 

But if youโ€™re like me and you feel a calling from the Soul to find truth, freedom, and love, pay attention. Listen to and trust that inner call.ย 

I recommend that you see the free Spiritual Awakening course weโ€™ve created which can help to offer some grounded support and guidance during this tender and painful part of your life. You can also see my Soul searching article for more insight.

How to Heal From Religious Trauma

Image of a person symbolically experiencing healing by blowing on a dandelion

Healing from religious trauma is a process. Iโ€™m not going to give you some kind of gimmicky โ€œ7-steps-to-healingโ€ shit because thatโ€™s not how it works.

Healing takes time, experimentation, vulnerability โ€ฆ and again, time.

What I offer below isnโ€™t meant to be a map, just some helpful practices that have supported me in my own journey of healing religious trauma. Am I completely healed? No. Iโ€™m still healing to this very day. But Iโ€™ve learned a hell of a lot across the past decade. And I want to share that with you now:

(i) Journaling โ€“ simple but powerful

Image of a person struggling with mental health issues journaling

Undergoing religious trauma can be a lonely and isolating experience. Most people canโ€™t understand or appreciate the intensity and complexity of how deeply harmful and disturbing to the psyche toxic religious conditioning can be.

One practice that helped me to keep some semblance of sanity during the darker parts of my religious journey was journaling. When I journaled, it felt like I was having a conversation with someone who actually understood what I was feeling โ€“ me.ย 

There is a healthy and unhealthy way of journaling (aka., constructive vs. destructive), so be sure to read my article on How to Journal to learn how to journal in a beneficial way.

You can also check out this guided Self-Love Journal that I co-created a little while back, if you want some structured help.

(ii) Mindfulness and self-compassion

Image of a woman with hands over her heart feeling self-love

Mindfulness helps you to learn how to live in the present moment (instead of getting lost in thoughts about the past or future). And self-compassion helps you to learn how to be gentle, kind, and forgiving with yourself.

Shadow Self Test image

Self-compassion eventually leads into compassion for others, which is why itโ€™s such a beautiful and healing practice.

The Self-Love Journal I mentioned above can help you develop more self-compassion. Otherwise, you can also check out the following resources:

  • Self-Compassion: 9 Ways to Heal Your Deepest Wounds
  • Self-Love: 23 Ways to Become a Doctor of the Soul

(iii) Spend lots of time in nature

Image of a relaxing nature scene

Being in and amongst nature was the second practice that helped me tremendously when I was in the thick of religion and feeling slowly suffocated. Nature has helped me ever since.

The power of nature lies in how free, flowing, spontaneous, and open it is โ€“ qualities that, incidentally, mirror our Higher Self or True Nature (because in reality, we are nature).

Nature also teaches us in innumerable ways about the cycles of birth and death, light and darkness, and the essential non-dual nature of reality.

Researches on the benefits of time spent in nature have called this practice ecotherapy. So be sure to spend time watching, walking in, climbing, or engaging in nature in whatever way feels most enjoyable to you.ย 

(iv) Make friends with your inner child

Image of a happy child running in an animal costume

Before making friends with your inner child, I always recommend gaining some level of healthy self-worth because inner child work is an extremely tender and vulnerable practice. If you go into this practice hating yourself, your inner child will never feel safe enough to come out and be embraced. So remember, self-love precedes inner child work.

With that said, working with my inner child was (and is still) one of the most nourishing ways of reclaiming a sense of creativity, joy, adventure, and even long lost wisdom.

Your inner child carries so much love and potential, and s/he is a crucial part of you. But at the same time, your inner child also carries so much unprocessed pain. And when it comes to religious trauma, chances are that your inner child was the one that copped the most suffering.

I recommend working with a trained trauma-informed therapist when learning how to heal your inner child โ€“ that helped me greatly. Journaling and mirror work also supported my journey of working with and reclaiming my inner child.

You can see the Inner Child Journal that Iโ€™ve co-authored if youโ€™d like some support with this deep work (feel free to use it alongside therapy as well).

(v) Mindful shadow work

Image of a hand breaking through chains

There are three main forms of inner work that I write about on this website, and they are:

  • Self-Love
  • Inner Child Work
  • Shadow Work

Self-love comes first, then inner child work, and finally shadow work. So the same warning applies to shadow work as with inner child work: pleasure ensure that you have a stable sense of self-esteem before you embark on this work. Loathing yourself and then deciding to explore your shadows (or dark side) is a recipe for disaster and retraumatization. So take heed and proceed slowly and mindfully.

Shadow work is the practice of exploring anything that obscures your inner Light โ€“ that could be false beliefs, core wounds, old programs, lost inner parts, or any part of you that feels contracted or blocked.ย 

What is so vital and powerful about shadow work is that it can help us at any point of our life journeys. No matter what degree of awakening weโ€™ve experienced, we always need to be mindful of our shadows because the reality is that we are both human (aka., imperfect) and divine.

For over a decade, we've strived to make this website a haven of free, valuable information. Imagine a world where this knowledge wasn't readily available. If this post sparked a meaningful insight or helped you in any way, please consider a donation as a heartfelt "thank you" for keeping this resource free. Every contribution, big or small, allows us to keep giving back.

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If youโ€™d like to explore shadow work, I recommend checking out our highly rated Shadow Work Journal.

(vi) Internal family systems โ€“ or working with your inner parts

Image of a moon and silhouettes of people representing the internal family

Internal family systems (IFS) is a form of psychotherapy which I love and highly recommend to those experiencing religious trauma.

IFS works on the premise that we are all composed of many different parts โ€“ happy, sad, angry, joyful, creative, sad, childlike, wise, and silly parts (and so on). At the center of our being is a wise and compassionate inner force known as the Self (capital โ€˜sโ€™), which I love because itโ€™s a form of therapy that welcomes the spiritual into the picture alongside psychological elements.

You can read more about IFS in my Internal Family Systems article. I also recommend looking into getting an IFS therapist if youโ€™d like to go deeper into this work.

(vii) Non-duality โ€“ or seeing through the separate self

Image of a hand reaching out to the light symbolic of non-duality

Non-duality is an eastern philosophical and spiritual teaching that suggests that everything is ultimately One, and that dualities such as โ€œself/other,โ€ โ€œlight/dark,โ€ โ€œsubject/object,โ€ are ultimately constructs of the mind.

Furthermore, the self that we take ourselves to be โ€“ the โ€œIโ€ โ€“ is actually an illusion based on a misunderstanding of who we truly are at a fundamental level.

Iโ€™m not saying that non-duality as a philosophy and path will be beneficial to you โ€“ but for me personally, it has helped me to see that the separate self, the ego, is at the root of suffering. And unlike religious teachings that divide the world into โ€œus/themโ€ โ€œgood/evilโ€ and so on, non-duality encourages a non-judgmental approach to life in which we see the underlying unity and Oneness beneath all beings.

Non-duality is also a path that is said to open a doorway to freedom from suffering via Self-Realization or spiritual illumination.

If youโ€™d like to explore this topic more, you can see my article on Non-Duality.

Other Practices That Have Helped:

  • Meditation
  • Artistic self-expression
  • Exploring inner archetypes
  • Balancing the root and sacral chakra
  • Working with a trauma-informed therapist
  • Learning basic self-care
  • Learning how to set personal boundariesย 
  • Prayer (it doesnโ€™t have to be religious!)

There are many other practices (this whole website is a resource open for your benefit), but these are some that come to mind. And I hope they are of help to you.

***

Religious trauma is underrepresented and isnโ€™t as explored or covered as Iโ€™d hope it to be โ€“ hence the need for this article.ย 

I hope you know now that (1) religious trauma is valid, (2) what youโ€™re experiencing is normal and youโ€™re not alone, (3) there is a way through this pain, and (4) religious trauma can actually be a doorway to a deep inner path of spiritual awakening.

What has your experience with religious trauma been like? If you feel comfortable with sharing, youโ€™re welcome to do so in the comments below.ย 

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About Aletheia Luna

Aletheia Luna is a prolific psychospiritual writer, author, educator, and intuitive guide whose work has touched the lives of millions worldwide. As a survivor of fundamentalist religious abuse, her mission is to help others find love, strength, and inner light in even the darkest places. She is the author of hundreds of popular articles, as well as numerous books and journals on the topics of Self-Love, Spiritual Awakening, and more. [Read More]

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  1. BluRose312 says

    April 25, 2025 at 6:41 pm

    Wow! I’ve come so far on my journey since leaving the church. And I’m SO PROUD of the work I’ve done. But reading your list, I was like , “shit, yep..still got that one. Shit, yep…still got that one too” hahaha
    Man, what an amazing article!! I have never seen anything like this before, and you have no clue the massive amount of validation that I felt while reading it! So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you!! I know that wasn’t easy to do.
    I come from a family with not 1, but 2 (TWO) Southern Baptist preachers. My maternal and paternal grandfathers were both preachers. And they were actually both wonderful, intelligent, loving men! The rest of the family made up for it though. My parents divorced when I was 2. I found out like 3 nights ago (I’m 38 now), mom only married my dad so she could get out of her parents’ house, bc she and my aunt were getting that good, slow burn trauma on the daily. But of course, mom wound up right back there, just with a kid in tow this time. We all lived together for a few years and then my grandparents moved into the parsonage, and mom and I stayed at the family house.
    Eventually, mom started dating her highschool sweetheart. His family and hers had met through church and were all very close. Mom had NEVER gotten over him.
    I’m not sure exactly when (it’s definitely still blocked), but best guesstimate is sometime between 1st & 3rd grade, the sexual abuse started. It happened 3-7 days/wk (every time he’d come to the house) for the next 10-12 yrs (until I started dating boys). I swore at a very young age that I would take that info to my grave. There was NO WAY that I could be the bad guy and blow up our family.
    All the while, I’m also getting all the shit from church and my family. Just the normal grinding down of the individual, overbearing and controlling, conditional love if I didn’t act the proper way, completely robbing me of my natural instincts and ability to trust or believe in myself in any capacity, while weirdly spoiling me to the point that I had no actual life skills when I moved out at the age of 20. And in that 5 yr or so gap (15-20), I had somehow repressed the abuse.
    I unknowingly repeated my mom’s history, and found the only way out I had, and moved in with my boyfriend. Within 72 hrs, I was getting drunk for the first time, and ALL the memories came flooding back instantly. Over the next 4 years I became a full-blown alcoholic in a toxic and mentally/ emotionally abusive relationship. I had left the church, left my family, I didn’t see or speak to any of them, and they would come banging on my door, screaming and yelling regularly. They were relentless. And of course, EVERYONE in our town thought I was a wild hellion and knew I’d gone off the rails and was a “bad person”, bc out of sheer “love” my family was destroying my name ..in the name of “prayer requests”.
    So.. one day, I finally decided to talk to my grandparents. They wanted to know why I was I was acting this way, and told me that I was killing my mother, bc I was making her so sick with worry. I told them in one blunt sentence that I’d been molested for years and who had done it. And my grandmother’s only response was, “The bible tells us not to judge, and that we need to forgive. So we just need to forgive him.”
    In an effort to save face, my “perfect” family spun their own tale, and the new talk of the town was how my awful boyfriend had coaxed me into making all this up so that we could get money…..18yrs later, mom’s still married to him and still drinking that Christian KoolAid

    Reply
  2. David says

    April 11, 2025 at 2:08 am

    “Reading the Bible three times over didnโ€™t solve any of my problems either โ€“ it made the situation worse.” That matches up with my situation. I spent decades reading the Bible in various ways: always in church as part of worship, in my private prayer life in accordance with a church calendar of daily readings, cover-to-cover three times and on an hoc basis as things came up.

    The more I read, the more I was uncomfortable with the contents of the Bible, how my church used it and, more generally, with Christianity. Those decades of Bible reading and church life left me with an internal dissonance between what I did (worship, prayer, doctrinal commitment) and what I thought (that Christianity isn’t the Truth of the Universe and is, rather, full of contradictions, mythological stories, human speculations often enforced by political powers and otherwordly visions that seem to have come from altered states). “Christianity is so strange that it can prove itself false by its own teachings,” is how I put the results of my christian contemplation in another forum.

    I paid a personal price for living with that kind of internal division, including how it divided me from family and friends when I acted on my own assessment of Christianity and the churches I went to. I still struggle to accept the validity of my own thoughts, instead ruminating over them as though I am convincing myself of what I am already convinced of! I recognize the difficulty believing what I believe stems from church teaching that I cannot trust my own thoughts but must seek to put on the mind of christ. I don’t believe that now but, on another level, that imperative to seek christ is part of me, regardless of what I believe.

    I’ve found that body-based practices really help me separate myself from the christian thoughts that have been in my mind since before I was even conscious. Endurance sports, mediation, mindful sexuality, all help ground me into my physical body and orient my mind to my actual experience. It’s an ongoing work.

    Reply
  3. TheBF says

    April 09, 2025 at 8:08 am

    Hi. I am a Christian. First of all, in no way is my intention to invalidate anyone’s experience, including the author’s, or mine, as I have also experienced religious trauma.

    I have a genuine question, and I would love for someone, author included, to give me their thoughts on it without judgement. Why is it that it is deemed okay to cut ties with people over certain beliefs, such as voting for a different political party, but when it is done because of different religious beliefs, it’s deemed abuse?

    Reply
  4. Crane says

    July 10, 2024 at 1:46 am

    I may or may not be in that exact religion right now, I have to wait a few more years before I can leave but I can’t wait.

    Reply
  5. Eclr says

    June 25, 2024 at 11:01 am

    Hi. HELP!!! THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS!!!!
    I have definite cultural/religious crap hoin on. Something happened that pushed too hard.

    Was this abuse?
    I had given up on formal religion..my whole self hated it. So I went to a place where an esoteric yoga of the mind person taught and seemed to be training a co teacher….
    They would come up to me and say nothing or something specific (it was odd for over 2 years!!!!) I think they were doing “triggering” … would any person do well being triggered for 2 years??
    Then..when I was at a certain members home the co teacher would ask to talk to me or go for a walk…but say nothing..lots of word fumbling. I think the “more advanced students” were looking at my nervous ๐Ÿ˜“ energy as a lab rat teaching tool …
    Then I the teacher told people in class true and untrue things about me to get me over my fear of others thoughts about me/gossip…asshat.
    THEN…in class they/teacher looked at me and said “my master told me I would be betrayed “…(as in if you talk about my teaching techniques my master and the while spiritual world and the class and the town. and god and jesus aand Powerful esoteric masters)will punish you/me…I have been living in fear of esoteric master punishment for a looooonnng time..
    My health began falling apart after this.
    … .. CLOSE TO MY LAST DAY THERE THEY TOLD ME “YOU’RE GOING TO FALL APART”
    I have been an isolated mess for over 20 years

    Reply
    • Eclr says

      July 04, 2024 at 5:56 am

      I made some typing errors.
      “Then I the teacher told….” is meant to be “Then the teacher told…”

      Reply
  6. Ariana says

    February 15, 2024 at 5:22 pm

    There was a nice middle-aged priest in my parish… Some of my, let’s say, spiritual questions (I was 13-14) he’d answer, and for some he’d sigh and say, “I don’t know.”… When I confessed I had smoked, he said, “Your body is a flower… don’t harm it.” … A kind and honest priest. :-)

    Reply
  7. Ariana says

    February 15, 2024 at 3:27 pm

    Btw, I liked your murderous ideation of stabbing the preacher ;-)

    Reply
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