Understanding Religious Trauma - $299
Deepen your understanding. Support your clients with confidence. Navigate the nuances of religious trauma with clarity.
Religious trauma is different. It doesn’t always look like other forms of trauma you may already be familiar with. Many clients enter therapy carrying layers of shame, fear, and confusion that stem not just from adverse experiences. They come from entire belief systems that have shaped their identity, relationships, and sense of safety.
As a practitioner, you might already have experience supporting trauma survivors, but religious trauma adds unique complexities that aren’t always addressed in standard trauma training.
This self-paced, 3-hour training is designed to bridge that gap. It gives you the tools, frameworks, and language you need to work confidently with clients navigating the aftermath of high-control, faith-based systems.
Why this matters
Religious trauma is often invisible. It can present as anxiety, depression, OCD, perfectionism, relational struggles, or grief and without the right framework, these presentations can be misinterpreted.
This training gives you the tools to recognise and understand the mechanisms of indoctrination, thought reform, and coercive control, so you can see how these operate in high-control religious systems.
You’ll gain insight into the relational and spiritual dimensions of trauma. Including the impact of fear-based teachings, shunning, and the pressures around marital expectations. You’ll also learn how to validate your clients’ experiences while offering trauma-informed, culturally sensitive support. The training equips you to help clients restore choice, autonomy, and self-trust after their internal worlds have been shaped and constrained by these high-control environments.
By completing this training, you’ll gain the knowledge, to understand clients navigating religious trauma.
What’s included in the training
This 3-hour self-paced training is designed for practitioners who want to understand religious trauma, especially if you already work with trauma but haven’t yet explored its unique religious context.
It’s structured to give you both practical insights and human understanding. So you can feel confident recognising and supporting clients navigating these experiences.
In this training, you’ll explore:
- Foundational terminology and concepts. So that you can confidently understand the language of religious trauma and communicate effectively with clients.
- How religious trauma presents differently from other trauma. So that you can recognise its unique psychological, emotional, and spiritual impacts.
- How beliefs, authority, and community shape identity. Including indoctrination, thought reform, and group-based coercive control, so that you can see why clients may struggle to trust themselves or feel autonomous.
- Gendered and relational dynamics. Including purity culture, marital and sexual expectations, and intersections with shame, diet culture, and sexual coercion, so that you can identify pressures that may be hidden or normalised.
- Fear-based theology and existential beliefs. Including doctrines of hell, rapture, and Armageddon, as well as spiritual warfare, so that you can understand the pervasive fear that shapes decision-making, behaviour, and internalised guilt.
- Separation, shunning, and excommunication. So that you can understand the profound relational, social, and identity losses clients may experience.
- Recognising the signs and symptoms of religious trauma. Across emotional, cognitive, behavioural, social, and physical domains, so that you can be aware of and validate clients’ lived experiences.
- Practical barriers to therapy and creating safety. So that you can make your practice spiritually aware, culturally competent, and emotionally safe for clients.
- Working with the nervous system and lived experience. So that you can integrate trauma-informed, somatic approaches while honouring the client’s spiritual context.
This training blends research, clinical insight, and real human examples. Aimed to help you understand not just the theory, but the lived experience of religious trauma so you can support clients with both empathy and expertise.
Who this training is for
This training is for practitioners (therapists, counsellors, psychologists, coaches, social workers and other mental health professionals) who:
- Already work with trauma, grief, or identity struggles but want to understand the specific dynamics of religious trauma.
- Want to confidently recognise indoctrination, coercive control, and spiritual abuse.
- Are looking for practical, trauma-informed frameworks to support clients navigating faith-based harm.
- Seek to validate client experiences without pathologising or minimising the emotional, spiritual, and relational impact of leaving a high-control system.
Bonuses Included
On top of the core training, you’ll receive three bonus resources to deepen your understanding:
1. Resource List (Books + Podcasts).
A curated selection of materials I return to in both practice and professional learning. Covers theory, clinical applications, and lived experience narratives to give you both context and practical insight.
2. Religious Trauma Cheat Sheet.
A 62 page comprehensive guide to terms, phrases, and concepts commonly encountered in Christian and Catholic contexts. This cheat sheet helps you decode the language your clients use and supports accurate, empathetic interventions.
3. eBook: A Shattered Sanctuary: From Fellowship to Freedom.
A raw, honest account of my personal journey through religious trauma, including indoctrination, coercion, and leaving a high-control faith community. Provides human insight into experiences clients may struggle to articulate.
Each bonus is included to give you both conceptual understanding and human insight. So you can connect with clients, interpret experiences accurately, and feel confident in sessions.
Professional Development & OPD Points
Complete the webinar and quiz to receive a certificate of completion. This counts for 3 OPD points with the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) as an ‘Online Training Program’. You may also be able to claim points with other professional bodies, it’s worth checking directly with your organisation.