It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and if there’s ever a time to name the unholy mess that religious trauma can make of our mental health, it’s now.
When we talk about mental health, we often jump to the usual suspects; anxiety, depression, burnout, grief. But what if some of those aren’t just about our workload, genetics or “not getting enough sunlight”? What if some of it goes back to sitting in pews, praying to be “made clean,” trying to contort ourselves into someone we’re not just to be loved or at least, not rejected?
If you’re nodding along already, you’re probably one of us. The ones who’ve left behind high-control religion, a spiritually abusive community, or a belief system that seemed to be in a toxic relationship with our nervous systems.
So, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the fear and shame that often still shows up, long after we’ve stopped attending the small group, burning the journals, or hiding our Google search history.
Let’s talk about how religious trauma impacts our mental health.
Fear Was A Feature & Shame The Gift That Kept On Giving
Most of us weren’t just accidentally afraid. Fear was often the primary teaching tool.
Eternal hellfire wasn’t just metaphor, it was an anxiety disorder waiting to happen. Add to that the fear of backsliding, the fear of disappointing God, of being “lukewarm,” of having “impure thoughts,” of missing our “calling,” and the all-time classic: the rapture happening while you were at home eating Doritos and watching something less than pure on TV.
Fear shaped how we saw ourselves and the world around us. It infiltrated decisions about our careers, our sexuality, our relationships, our bodies. We were taught that fear was holy. That if we feared God enough, we were doing it right.
But here’s the thing: when you live in chronic fear, your body learns to brace for impact even when the threat is gone. That’s trauma. And religious trauma is trauma.
Religious systems often used shame as a form of behavioural control. Whether it was purity culture telling us our virginity was our worth, or prosperity gospel making us feel like poverty = punishment, shame was everywhere.
Shame whispered, “You’re not enough.” And then, when you dared to step outside the lines, it yelled, “How dare you?”
Even now, long after leaving, shame can show up uninvited. It can cling to your identity; your queerness, your body, your spiritual curiosity, your desire for pleasure, rest, or boundaries.
I’ll be honest: I used to feel a weird guilt after skipping church years after I stopped believing. That’s how deep it runs. It’s like the ghost of judgement past. A leftover internalised voice that says, “You’re doing life wrong.”
But let’s be clear: shame is not a spiritual gift.
Religious Trauma Looks Like Mental Illness… But It’s Often Misunderstood
One of the hardest parts about religious trauma is that it can mimic or mask more familiar mental health conditions. Panic attacks, flashbacks, disassociation, religious OCD (also called scrupulosity), social anxiety, deep existential dread. These are not uncommon.
But what do you do when your therapist doesn’t understand that the idea of “resting” still makes you feel guilty? Or that praying feels like a trauma trigger? Or that you can’t even say “God” without spiralling?
Many people are misdiagnosed or misunderstood because the root of their mental health distress is tied to spiritual experiences no one around them knows how to validate, let alone help them unpack.
That’s why therapists who get religious trauma (and I say this with deep bias and even deeper compassion) are so bloody essential.
There’s a moment I’ll never forget.
I had just left a high-control church, and I couldn’t stop crying. Like, could not. And I’m not a graceful crier, think ugly sobbing, tissues everywhere, whisper-yelling, “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!” I thought I was having a breakdown.
Spoiler alert: I was. But it wasn’t because I was weak or sinful or not praying enough. It was because I was finally safe enough to feel.
My nervous system, which had spent years surviving on fear and performing goodness, finally collapsed. And through therapy, community, and a whole lot of deconstruction, I started to see the truth: I wasn’t broken. I was grieving.
Grieving the loss of certainty. Grieving a God who never really saw me. And grieving the years I spent trying to fix myself for a system that was never built for people like me.
And I wasn’t alone.
What Healing Actually Looks Like
If you’ve found yourself tangled in the fear-and-shame spiral, you’re not failing at healing; you’re just human. But the good news is: this cycle can be broken. And not by going back to church or “reconciling with God” (unless that feels empowering for you). Healing looks different here.
It might look like:
- Therapy that actually acknowledges your religious trauma.
- Learning to trust your gut instead of guilt.
- Naming shame out loud so it shrivels.
- Letting your fear be felt, not fixed.
- Redefining spirituality, or walking away from it entirely.
- Finding pleasure and rest and community that don’t ask you to shrink.
It’s slow. It’s messy. And sometimes the fear sneaks back in. Sometimes shame still whispers. But you start to recognise it for what it is; conditioning, not truth.
Why Mental Health Awareness Month Needs to Include Religious Trauma
When we talk about mental health without talking about religious trauma, we leave a huge number of people behind.
We leave behind the people who were told anxiety was a lack of faith. We leave behind the people who were prayed over instead of supported. The people who could have been medicated for depression but were being spiritually gaslit. The people who walked away and lost their entire support system overnight.
Mental Health Awareness Month should absolutely include the people who are still trying to rebuild themselves after religion nearly destroyed them.
If that’s you; know this: you are not alone. You are not broken. You’re not crazy or evil or “falling away.” You are recovering. Reclaiming. Remembering who you were before fear and shame dressed up as faith.
And that? That’s holy work.
If this hit close to home, you’re not imagining things and you’re definitely not overreacting.
Religious trauma is real. Its impact on your mental health is real. And you don’t have to unpack it alone.
During Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to invite you to:
- Talk about your story with someone safe and listen to other’s on Beyond The Surface.
- Read something that helps you feel seen.
- Take a break from religious spaces that still trigger you.
- Or come join us over at The Religious Trauma Collective, where we get it.
You don’t have to keep holding it all together. You get to fall apart and build something beautiful from the rubble.