When Words Can’t Be Found— How to Talk About Religious Trauma with Your Therapist
We’ve all been there or seen it. A couple on a dinner date where conversation doesn’t extend past, “How’s the food… good?” And a nod in response.
I was taught to prepare clients for discharge from therapy when they ran out of things to talk about. To my surprise, most often people didn’t want to prepare for discharge from therapy even when they struggled to find things to talk about in therapy.
My teachers would have called this dependence on the therapist, but I knew these independent people. They weren’t dependent on me.
Like any relationship, less talkativeness may not be a sign of disinterest after having known each other for a while. Instead, it might indicate how safe they feel with you that just being in your presence feels good. But for a relationship to work, there must be ongoing, open communication. Otherwise, there’s stagnation.
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While there’s many reasons people may want to continue therapy but don’t know what to say to their therapist, I’ve found that there’s a few common reasons why this happens for religious trauma survivors’ in particular.
main reasons religious trauma survivors may struggle to find things to talk about in therapy:
Part of religious trauma is learning to self-censor thoughts and feelings. Religious trauma survivors may think they have nothing worth sharing in therapy because there have been no changes in their circumstances since the last session. Talking openly about their uncensored thoughts and feelings can be unknown, and people don’t know where to start. Not knowing where to start because of taught self-censorship is okay. It begins with just talking even if what you are saying doesn’t seem to make sense after disclosing your thoughts and feelings. Your therapist’s job is to guide you into deeper understanding of your emotions and internal processes.
It can be confusing for religious trauma survivors to lose a crisis script. High control religious groups teach people to find crises and apply doctrine as the intervention, which goes by many names like healing, Gospel, light, etc. Part of what causes people to leave high control religious groups is noticing that this doctrine is false, and crises not only persist that happened outside of the group but also are compiled with crises created within the group itself. Without a crisis, healing work may feel strange of moving from reactive to proactive in therapy after crises have been well-managed.
Testimony Culture is a real thing. High control religious groups coach people how to share the terrible things that happened to them and how they found “redemption” or a resolution by loyalty to the religious group. Therapists, who go off script from what questions expected in therapy can offer religious trauma survivors a positive challenge in therapy, but it may also shutdown or dissociation to occur because the mind was coached to not speak about unrehearsed vulnerable matters.
There can only be so much power that is shared in parallel between a client and therapist. Clients pay therapists for their expertise. This can place a therapist in a position of authority in the therapy relationship. Therapy may be the first time a religious trauma survivor has experienced an authority figure in their life that was healthy. Even so, religious trauma survivors may feel a need to perform for their therapist because of what was demanded by authority figures (i.e. parents, pastors, rabbis, bishops, etc.) in their religious groups. The performance can include avoiding topics that religious trauma survivors fear would disappoint or bore the therapist. Underlying these fears can be teachings from high control religious groups about experiencing terrible things if you displease authority.
What’s considered some of the most profound topics to explore in therapy are the most taboo to discuss in high control religious groups such as parental abuse, coercive control, and feelings of jealousy and anger. The mind may still avoid these themes in therapy because of foundational experiences in high control religion that didn’t allow the exploration of these themes.
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So how do you find topics to talk about in therapy as a religious trauma survivor who spent most of your life censored?
20 topics that religious survivors can bring to therapy for further healing:
Your conversion story without using spiritualized language
What it was like to watch porn for years before becoming sexually active with another person
The surrounding context of your family changing denominations or converting to another faith
Who you practiced kissing with as a child or teenager who believed in sexual abstinence before marriage
What the lyrics were to favorite songs you had while in the religious group
How your relationship to prayer changed when alone and with others during your time in the religious group
Developing sexual ethics and boundaries after no longer believing in sexual abstinence outside of marriage
Friendships that were lost and left ungrieved because of no longer sharing the same beliefs
Your feelings about weddings and funerals you witnessed from your former religious group conducting the rites and rituals
Difficulty maintaining morale in dating with it moving slower than matchmaking and courtship in your former religious group
Fear of committing to a relationship, home, or job when no longer believing that the Church is your family, and heaven is your Forever Home
What doctrine your parents and adults from your religious group used to justify physical and sexual abuse and harassment
How the phrase “honor your mother and father” has fluctuated in meaning since childhood
What “fidelity” means after no longer believing in abstaining from sex before marriage
Difficulty with penetrating, being penetrated, or orgasming with another person because of religious shame impacting sexual functioning
Questioning of whether to celebrate holidays after leaving the religious group and if so, how it would be different in no longer holding the same beliefs
Avoidance of public affection or dates with someone of the same-sex or same-gender
Interest or involvement in BDSM and kink and how it may be used as shadow work for religious trauma
Fear of abandonment that comes from hell or rapture theology
Obsessive cleaning practices that became ritualistic in preparing for the Second Coming of the Messiah when you were in the religious group
When it feels like you have nothing to talk about with your therapist, but you’re not ready to stop therapy yet, here’s what I want you to consider.
Like any relationship, therapy requires ongoing, open communication to have the growth you’re looking for.
While we as therapists may be observant, intuitive, and insightful, we aren’t omniscient. We can’t read what’s on your mind or know exactly what you have experienced. To offer you the best we can in therapy, we need you to tell us more about you, including the parts that your religious upbringing told you to ignore or repent from.
