PsyD, Clinical Psychology

There are people in the world, including myself, who have been manipulated by toxic church principles of shame, fear, and contempt disguised as love. These principles create a form of mental bondage and a painful existence to those who have been programmed by their church. Getting help to identify these problems can be difficult as therapists in general tend to be secular in their belief system. Many who did not grow up in a toxic church do not understand the deep pain and shame that gets embedded in a person’s psyche. Words like forgiveness, love, grace, soul, God, and salvation get twisted into a psychological bondage to their church rather than freedom from pain as they preach.

Being traumatized in the name of God gives a person a deep sense of unease and confusion about their lives, especially if they leave their church. Suddenly they are out in the world without knowing how things work. They often are victimized again without being able to pinpoint exactly what happened. The concept here is spiritual abuse. Therapists would do well to learn about the damage a toxic church environment can do to a person’s psyche and how to help their clients heal. Books such as "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse" and "Toxic Faith" can help a client heal, but so many have been so traumatized, the very word God can trigger a host of unpleasant memories.

God needs to be re-defined in a healthy context. Christian researchers, such as James Fowler, Catherine Stonehouse, and Rebecca Nye, assure us that there are Christians in the world who believe in the same healthy developmental phases of the more secular researchers: Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg. People need to know there is a healthy way for a human being to develop spiritually so they can decipher what was unhealthy in their own upbringing. Christian children can grow up in a maladaptive family and church environment and suffer greatly in their dealings out in society. They don’t understand what is spiritually healthy because their environment told them what they were experiencing was what God is. A therapist adept in spiritual competencies can help a client tease apart their past; the abuse they may have suffered, and what healthy spirituality looks like.

Following you will find an essay to help therapists understand more about the trauma some Christians have gone through and resources to help them recover.

Alongside concerns for teen pregnancy and the AIDS crisis, the purity culture movement arose in the early 1990s stemming from fears within the Evangelical community regarding the breakdown of the traditional family structure. Sexual abstinence campaigns began in 1993 under the True Love Waits banner. Sexual purity industry programs, both religious and secular, resulted across the United States that taught adolescents any sexual activity or thought outside of heterosexual marriage was damaging and sinful. Purity culture was significant as it is estimated one out of five American youth took a purity pledge to abstain from premarital sex. A main research question guided this study: What are the lived experiences of those who grew up inside of Evangelical purity culture who took a pledge of sexual abstinence and went to great lengths to keep that pledge in a culture that is predominantly not sexually abstinent? This study captured data from the interviews of eight purity culture survivors and conducted an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of having lived through strict and shaming rules of purity culture. This study investigated the psychological and spiritual issues stemming from these individuals’ participation in purity culture. The result is a careful examination of the detrimental effects experienced in these women’s adult lives, including anxiety and depression stemming from sexual shame and guilt. Results of this study add to the psychological literature about the felt sense of purity culture and provide insight into how individuals have interpreted the teaching as well as how their mental health and well-being have been impacted. Psychological damage from sexual shame and guilt can become lifelong disabilities of anxiety, depression, and chronic posttraumatic stress. The researcher’s intentions are to provide education that contributes to healthy relationships and healing from the complex problem of religious trauma.