Religious Trauma Counselling

The traumatic impacts of high control religious environments can be layered and hard to unravel. Its preconditions often reach back to childhood: purity culture, discipline through shame, and being prevented from forming relationships outside the religious community. Those who question their church, or are unable to conform to it, are often plagued with uncertainty, fear of hell, and self-doubt. Moreover, many people face excommunication from their communities and the loss of family and friends. Counselling provides a judgement-free space to deconstruct the ideology and practices through which religion was used to limit our worldview and erode our sense of self. This approach allows us either to re-imagine our faith as a positive source of meaning or to pursue meaning in new ways altogether.