Religious Triggers Explained: The Role of Attachment Bonds & Cult Programming
If you’ve left a high-control religion, you may still find yourself responding to religious triggers long after you’ve separated from the system that harmed you.
A member of my religious harm recovery community recently asked a question about this exact experience.
He described experiencing one of these religious triggers when he read something a friend from his former church posted on social media.
The way he explained it made it sound like he was triggered in a “god way,” meaning, it made him feel “the Spirit,” as defined by his former religion (in this case, Mormonism), stirring inside him.
He said he started having words come to him like he would when he was still a member of the church, a time when he identified words like these as “god’s voice” speaking to him.
After describing this experience, he asked: “Why am I having those feelings even when it seems like I’m fighting against them?“
He was conflicted because, on a cognitive level, he no longer believed in the “voice of god,” but when he read his friend’s social media post, his psyche automatically defaulted to his prior belief structure, generating sensations and words he had come to identify as being connected to god.
As I pondered my response, I realized this is something many people who were indoctrinated into a high-control religion experience because of the way these coercive communities manipulate our minds, bodies, and emotions.
And religious triggers are the natural outcome of this type of manipulation.
For people who continue to experience distressing religious triggers even after deconstructing your beliefs, you may wonder, “why? Why is this happening to me.” Or, “I don’t believe this anymore. Why is my brain still going there?”
It’s important to understand that continuing to experience religious triggers doesn’t mean you’re weak or you haven’t deconstructed properly.
They are natural and expected byproducts of experiencing the manipulative tactics of a high-control religion.
In this article, I’ll be discussion two possible (and likely overlapping) reasons why you have developed religious triggers.
What We’ll Be Covering:
What Are Religious Triggers?
Let’s start off by identifying a shared definition of “religious triggers.”
In simple terms, a religious trigger is something you experience through your senses—a word, an image, a sound, a place—that immediately transports you back to your time in the religious environment that harmed you.
For me, certain hymns will instantly take me back to Sunday morning worship services at the conservative non-denominational churches I grew up in.
Those traditional Evangelical churches I attended featured hymns accompanied by piano or organ music as part of our weekly ritual, and I genuinely enjoyed some of those songs at the time.
Now, hearing the familiar lines of a hymn or even hearing an organ, whether it’s playing a hymn or not, triggers emotions and body sensations I often experienced on Sunday mornings.
In this example, hymns and organ music could both be considered religious triggers.
When someone experiences a religious trigger, it’s natural to wonder whether you’ve made a mistake in leaving or if god is trying to “call you back.”
However, when you understand that this is a natural and expected outcome of having a trigger activated by environmental cues, you can recognize that you’re simply having a normal emotional and physiological response in your nervous system.
It’s not god. It’s physiology.
In the next section, we’re going to explore the two forces that often shape someones physiology when they’re indoctrinated into a high-control religion.
Understanding Your Religious Triggers: The Two Forces at Work
I believe that experiences like the one I shared in the opening section of this article are incredibly common, and I’ve even seen threads of it woven through my own experience since leaving religion.
What I’ve come to understand is that religious triggers and the feeling of being “tugged” back to the fold are not random or inexplicable phenomena. Rather, they emerge from two powerful, intersecting forces that shape our psychological and physiological responses.
My theory is this: attachment needs and cult programming work together as the primary driving forces behind our religious triggers.
These two mechanisms tend to reinforce and amplify each other.
Our deep human need for connection and belonging (attachment needs) creates the emotional foundation that high-control religions exploit through cult programming techniques.
The result is a potent combination that can continue to influence us long after we’ve intellectually rejected the belief system.
Understanding how attachment science and cult programming intersect helps us make sense of why these triggers feel so overwhelming and why they persist even when we’re consciously fighting against them.
Let me break down each of these forces and how they contribute to the religious triggers you may be experiencing.
Attachment Bonds
The first reason we develop such powerful religious triggers relates to human physiology and the science of attachment.
Humans are fundamentally wired for connection. It’s a basic survival need, which is why we form attachments with other humans.
According to neuroscience, when we feel safe, connected and loved, our brain releases neurochemicals like oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin that create feelings of wellbeing and pleasure.
Because these feelings are so rewarding, we naturally seek more of them.
In response to this feeling of reward, our brains develop neural pathways that draw us back toward experiences that have provided this kind of connection.
This attachment-driven response manifests in two key ways.
First, our biology inherently pushes us towards connections that have provided those neurochemical rewards.
Second, when that connection takes the form of a relationship with god, the attachment dynamics become particularly powerful because this relationship is often experienced as your primary, most intimate bond—one that promises unconditional love, eternal security, and ultimate meaning.
The Human Drive Towards Attachment
To understand how this works in practice, let’s consider how attachment operates in our everyday relationships.
Think of a romantic relationship, for example.
In the beginning stages of a new romance, you probably couldn’t get enough of each other. You felt happier just being in proximity to this person. Your brain was flooded with feel-good chemicals every time you connected.
And if you’ve ever been through the heartbreak of a relationship ending, you know how devastating that can feel—the loss of that attachment can plunge you into depression, create physical pain, and leave you feeling unmoored.
Even if you ended the relationship ended because you knew it was unhealthy, toxic, or simply bad for you in some way, you probably still had moments where you missed that person.
Following the break-up, you can probably recall certain triggers associated with that relationship—a song that was “yours,” a location where you shared meaningful moments, a certain smell that reminded you of them—that made you long for the happier times you had together, even when you intellectually understood the relationship was harmful.
Experiencing these kinds of triggers in the wake of a severed attachment and perhaps longing to reconnect with the person these triggers bring to mind is both natural and expected.
In these moments, your attachment system is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: remembering and seeking out experiences of connection.
It’s trying to follow those established neural pathways and the promised reward of all those feel-good chemicals.
Religion as an Attachment Relationship
It’s really no different with religion.
Your relationship with god was just that—a relationship. And for many people indoctrinated into a high-control religion, it was their primary relationship.
Your brain and nervous system ‘attached’ to god or Jesus through the same neurological and physiological processes that create attachment bonds with human beings.
This is because god and Jesus are personified and made “real” in most Christian traditions.
You talked to them, felt their presence, believed they loved you, sought comfort from them in times of distress. These are all hallmarks of an attachment relationship.
So when you leave religion, you’re essentially “breaking up with god.”
You’re severing an attachment bond that may have been one of the most significant relationships in your life.
The fact that you sometimes miss god or the relationship you had doesn’t necessarily mean re-entering that relationship (at least the way your previous religion defined it) would be a healthy choice for you.
Religious triggers can make you feel like you want to “get back together” with god in the same way that catching a whiff of your ex-lover’s cologne might create an intense longing for them, even when you know the relationship was harmful.
This is your attachment system and your brain “remembering” the good parts of that relationship—the feelings of connection, purpose, love, and belonging that were genuinely meaningful to you.
Understanding this attachment dimension helps explain why religious triggers can feel so visceral and compelling.
But there’s another force at work that makes these triggers even more potent, especially in combination to our natural attachment physiology: the cult programming techniques used by high-control religions.
Cult Programming
Beyond the attachment dynamics we’ve explored, there’s another critical factor that explains the power of religious triggers: the deliberate programming techniques employed by high-control religious groups.
While attachment explains why we form bonds with religious communities and god, cult programming explains how these groups manipulate our neurological responses to create automatic reactions that persist long after we’ve left.
Understanding this programming dimension is essential because it helps us recognize that our responses to religious triggers are simply predictable results of sophisticated psychological manipulation.
Understanding Mind Control Tactics
Steven Hassan, a leading expert on cult psychology and author of Combating Cult Mind Control, developed the BITE model to help us understand how high-control groups systematically influence their members.
BITE is an acronym that stands for the four areas of control these groups target:
When a religious group employs these tactics systematically, they’re doing more than simply influencing your beliefs.
They’re literally rewiring your brain to respond in predictable ways to specific stimuli.
This is what makes cult programming so insidious and why religious triggers can feel so automatic and overwhelming.
How Cult Programming Affects Physiology
Here’s what’s happening on a neurological level: as a high-control group gains influence over your behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions, your brain begins forming neural pathways—essentially automatic response patterns—that get activated by specific triggers.
Think of neural pathways like well-worn trails through a forest.
The more you walk the same path, the more defined it becomes, until eventually you can walk it without conscious thought.
Your brain works the same way—repeated experiences create pathways that become increasingly automatic over time.
High-control religions deliberately create situations designed to establish and reinforce these pathways.
Consider how these groups use environmental and sensory manipulation:
When altar calls happen, they typically occur in spaces with very predictable lighting, carefully selected music building to an emotional peak, and repetitive messaging from the pastor or worship leader.
This is an intentional cult programming technique designed to create an altered state of consciousness where you’re more susceptible to suggestion and emotional manipulation.
Over time, your brain learns: “When I hear this music, when I’m in this environment, when I hear these words, I should feel X emotion or think Y thought or take Z action.”
Why Religious Triggers Stick With Us
This brings us back to the experience the person in my religious harm recovery community had that I wrote about in the first section of this article.
When he encountered something that was part of his religious programming—a worship song, a scriptural phrase, a theological concept—his brain automatically activated those original neural pathways, even though he was consciously rejecting the belief system.
This is why he said, “Why am I having those feelings even when I’m fighting against them?“
Here’s the straightforward answer: that’s how the high-control religion you were in programmed you to respond.
If this feels applicable to your own experience with religious triggers, here’s what’s important to understand:
This doesn’t mean you’re doing recovery “wrong” or that you haven’t truly left. It simply means that neurological change takes time.
Your brain needs new experiences, new associations, and new pathways to gradually weaken the old programming.
This is a process, not an event.
Every time you recognize a trigger for what it is—programming, not truth or divine guidance—you’re beginning to create new neural pathways that will eventually become stronger than the old ones.
Understanding the mechanics of cult programming can be incredibly empowering because it demystifies experiences that might otherwise feel confusing or frightening.
The fact that you’re still experiencing religious triggers isn’t evidence that you’ve made the wrong choice in leaving.
They’re simply evidence that the group you left was using powerful psychological techniques to control you and that your healing journey is still unfolding.
Where to Go From Here
Understanding why religious triggers happen through the lens of attachment theory and cult programming is an important first step.
But knowing how to navigate them when they arise, in those vulnerable moments of panic or unexpected longing, is where healing transforms from theory into practice.
Community Support
Here’s what I’ve learned through my own recovery journey: healing from religious harm isn’t just about reading the right articles or books. It’s about having consistent support and connection with others who truly understand what you’re going through.
That’s why I created the Religious Harm Recovery community—to provide you with ongoing inspiration, education, and a sense of belonging as you navigate your healing journey.
Both newsletters are designed specifically for folks recovering from religious indoctrination, offering practical insights and compassionate guidance for your healing journey.
Reading Recommendations
If you’re looking for specific, practical strategies to cope when triggers arise, I’ve written a comprehensive article on this topic: Religious Trauma Triggers: What They Are & How to Cope.
For deeper understanding of the concepts we’ve explored in this post, I recommend these foundational books:
- Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan – A comprehensive guide to understanding mind control tactics and the BITE model
- Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller – Understand your attachment patterns and how they affect your relationships
Other Articles About Coercive Control:
-
How Loyalty to a Narcissistic God Damages Mental Health
It’s common knowledge that narcissists can take a real toll on the mental health of those they’re close to, but have you considered that perhaps the god you once served was a narcissist?
-
Understanding Religious Cult Programming + How to Recover
This article provides a detailed overview of how religious cults use programming techniques to control their members, and it also breaks down some effective strategies for deprogramming and recovery.
-
7 Subtle Signs of Spiritual Abuse
When I first began to deconstruct my faith, I struggled to make sense of my experiences. I struggled because nothing in my religious past seemed to fit the conventional idea of trauma or abuse. I hadn’t been physically or verbally…
