Post-Religion Growth Articles

When you leave a high control religious group, you’re not just stepping away from a belief system. Most of us also face the reality of losing a significant social network. For those who grew up in closed-off communities, finding new friends and support systems can often feel perplexing, overwhelming, and maybe even scary. The goal…

Have you heard of comparative suffering? It’s a term Brené Brown discusses quite often in her work on shame and vulnerability, so it’s been swirling around the personal-development world for a while now. However, it’s still something I see people doing all the time, particularly folks who have experiences of religious trauma. The reason I wanted…

High control religious groups are fundamentalist by nature. My personal experience has been with Evangelical Christianity, but my professional experience has shown me that many religious groups are embedded with varying degrees of fundamentalism. What I have discovered in both my personal life and in my work with clients who are deconstructing their religious beliefs…

Confession time: setting boundaries has been a MAJOR area of struggle for me. I used to be all mixed up when it came to setting boundaries in both my personal life and my professional life. You see, I would pendulum swing from not having clear boundaries and trying to “help” everyone to becoming super-rigid and just cutting people…

One of the most frequent questions I get as a religious trauma therapist is how people should go about navigating relationships with their religious family members once they themselves have left the church. Yikes! This is a tough one. On my social media pages, I often talk about the interplay between family trauma and religious…