Religious Trauma and Narcissism Recovery

TRIGGER WARNING: Today’s post explores physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect. If these are sensitive topics for you, or you believe they might be sensitive topics for you, please use your discretion in reading this post.

As always, if you or someone you know is considering hurting themselves or someone else, do NOT use the Contact Me feature or call me. Call 911, call or text 988, or go directly to an emergency room. If you or someone you know needs emotional or mental support, don’t wait until it reaches crisis level—call or text 988.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, it won’t come as a surprise that religious trauma and narcissistic abuse can go hand in hand. We’ve talked many times about the six tenets of narcissism, two of which link up perfectly with religious abuse: Religion can be an excellent way to meet the unhealthy need to be seen as good, right, or perfect, and meet the unhealthy need to exert power and control.

Not everyone who has a parent with narcissistic traits has experienced religious trauma, but for those who have, recovery can be challenging. While the term religious trauma syndrome has been around since Dr. Marlene Winell coined the term in 2011, it is not recognized in either the medical or mental health fields as an official diagnosis.

This means your therapist may not know what to listen for, or know how to address religious trauma syndrome. To complicate matters further, if you have a parent who has narcissistic traits, you may not have thought about whether religious trauma is a part of your lived experience. So, knowing a little about religious trauma and narcissism recovery is imperative.

What Is Religious Trauma?

Religious trauma is the experience of feeling both fearful and powerless, because of some aspect of religion or religious practice. The fear and powerlessness can stem from emotional, physical, verbal, or sexual abuse or neglect.

A common example is religious trauma secondary to emotional abuse or neglect related to beliefs and practices. Some religions hold strong all or nothing beliefs about purity, depravity, sin, and going to hell. All or nothing thinking is age-normative for preschool-age children, so it should come as no surprise that people with narcissistic traits find it easy to glom onto religious all or nothing thinking. Their emotional immaturity makes them easy prey!

If a parent feels justified by their religious beliefs, these all or nothing beliefs may lead to physical abuse. A parent may “beat out the devil” when they believe the child is misbehaving, or “beat the gay away” if a child engages in any behavior the parent considers misgendered. It may be a parent physically forcing a child to attend religious services, or physically abusing the child until they do so.

Religious abuse can also be verbal--for example, the parent telling a child they should be grateful for the physical abuse, because that’s how the parent is going to save their soul. Or, parents may deliberately neglect a child’s needs, claiming the child deserves to be punished for their sins by not eating, drinking water, sleeping, etc.

Religious sexual trauma includes sexual assault by a clergyperson, or sexual assault by a church member. In addition to being harmed by a trusted adult outside the home, religious sexual trauma may be amplified at home. For parents with narcissistic traits, protecting their child from a clergyperson or another church member may be less important than meeting their unhealthy need to be seen as good, right, and perfect. They may deny the abuse happened, or blame the child instead of protecting them.

Many religions teach, directly or indirectly, patriarchal and misogynistic messages. Some examples include the most powerful or only deity or earthly representative being male; women not being allowed to worship in the same room with men; women being unable to hold positions of power in their religious group and in the community; women being expected to obey their husbands; women being responsible for supporting their husbands to prevent him from falling into sin (a task that is not within anyone’s circle of control), and religious rules that unequally punish its members that are based on gender.

These messages can lead to feelings of inadequacy and the belief that you are less-than or unlovable. Again, this can be amplified in a home led by a parent with narcissistic traits. An example is the parent who uses dysfunctional family roles to elevate a male child to the role of Golden or Hero child, while a female child is relegated to Lost Child or Scapegoat, based on patriarchal and misogynistic teachings.

Some religions teach that some sexual orientations are sinful. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you may have been told you were sinful, experienced rejection, or been verbally or physically abused or neglected because of your sexuality within your religious organization. The unhealthy need to be seen as good, right, and perfect, along with the unhealthy need for power and control, can result in parents with narcissistic traits amplifying this abuse and rejection in the home.

Beliefs about "the rapture," in which holy individuals will be taken up into heaven and sinners left behind on Earth, can be absolutely terrifying for children. The fear of being completely abandoned by everyone you know and love because they were taken away in the rapture, while you were left behind because “you’re such a bad child,” “you’re a sinner,” or because “God loves you, but not your sins,” can become the foundation of your attachment patterns and your attachment style, and become the foundation of your adult relationships.

It’s easy to see how religious trauma results in fear and shame. Sometimes religious abuse is designed to cause fear and shame, in order to motivate you to engage in the religion’s desired behaviors. Or, fear and shame may be secondary to the messages you receive, directly or indirectly. Parents with narcissistic traits may project their perceived sinful behaviors on to their children (“you’re a slut,” “you’re a whore,” “you’re a horrible person,”), or use religious beliefs to exert power and control (“you’re going to hell because you’re unsaved”).

Many children cope with religious abuse by blaming themselves for their parents’ thoughts, feelings, and actions. Self-blame is an excellent coping strategy, as it gives children a sense of power and control (“If I change, then I’ll be safe/lovable”) in an otherwise overwhelming situation.

Not surprisingly, the desire to blame oneself, then try to change to suit a parent to avoid abuse or neglect, can lead to perfectionism. Because religion itself can so easily become all or nothing in its presentation, you may have learned as a child to fear that you’re going to hell or you’ll be abandoned, because you’re not doing it perfectly all the time—because no one can.

Finally, there is also the trauma of not attending services or related activities. While the beliefs or practices themselves may be traumatic, no longer having connections can result in feeling rejected and abandoned. Some religions encourage ostracizing members who leave the church, or fail to follow church beliefs and practices. These practices create a double-bind situation, in which you are doomed no matter what you do. If you stay, you will continue to experience religious trauma. If you go, you will be ostracized and isolated.

How Does Religious Trauma Relate to Narcissism Recovery?

As mentioned, one of the most common coping skills children (and adults) use to survive abusive situations is to see themselves as the problem. Being raised by a parent with narcissistic traits in a religion that focuses on perfection and obedience tends to amplify a child’s tendency for self-blame.

Because having a parent with narcissistic traits can affect you so profoundly and in so many ways, it’s possible you may have minimized your religious trauma. Compared to all of the other abuse and neglect you experienced, you may consider the things that happened to you with regard to religion relatively minor.

This is especially common for people who had mixed experiences with religion—they enjoyed the social aspect of it, found comfort in the rituals, or found some of the beliefs helpful. You may not have seriously considered how your childhood affects your relationship to spirituality or religion.

That said, religious trauma can impact the final stage of healing in narcissism recovery, in which you reshape your thoughts, change your actions, and rebuild your relationships. Those relationships include your relationship to spirituality or religion—that is, your relationship with whatever or whomever you see as something greater than yourself, however you define it. You may consider something greater than yourself to be nature, the Universe, a deity or a group of deities, or an energy source.

Regardless of how you define something greater than self, decades of research make it clear thatn understanding your place in the universe, and actively participating within that place, is a key piece of both mental and physical health and well-being. So, I encourage you to consider whether you experienced religious abuse or neglect as a child. If you did, when you’re ready, I encourage you to heal those traumas, so you can explore, experiment with, and embrace new spiritual or religious beliefs.

What To Do If You’ve Experienced Religious Trauma

The stages of recovery for religious trauma are essentially the same as navigating other types of trauma. Creating safety is the first step. This means finding someone you trust to talk to about what you experienced. This could be someone in your family or friend group, but bear in mind that this person needs to be able to hear about what you went through without becoming overwhelmed by their own thoughts and feelings. Your support person may have experienced their own religious trauma!

Next, you’ll create space and support so you can experience your thoughts and feelings about the abuse and neglect you experienced. Once you’ve uncoupled the feelings from the memories, you can then work on creating new ways of thinking about the past. Again, this can be done someone you know, but they will need to be able to hold space for you as you share your thoughts and feelings. They will also need to be both helpful and impartial as you decide how you want to restructure your thoughts.

Finally, you’ll rebuild your spiritual or religious beliefs. This means researching new beliefs, organizations, and practices, and then experimenting with engaging in new ways to connect to a sense of something greater than self.

If your religious beliefs change, you may need to reevaluate your relationships, too. Because many religious practices are community-based, you may find yourself with far fewer social opportunities. Again, this is amplified if you've gone to low-contact or no contact with your parent with narcissistic traits.

Because religious trauma happens in relationships with others, being in relationships with others who share your beliefs can be a significant part of healing from religious trauma. So, seeking out new relationships with others who share your new beliefs goes a long way toward healing religious trauma.

Identifying and healing from religious trauma, particularly if you have a parent with narcissistic traits, can be challenging. If you believe you experienced religious trauma, I encourage you to work with a trauma-informed therapist who is familiar with religious trauma. If you have a parent who has narcissistic traits, seek out a therapist who is familiar with religious trauma in the context of narcissistic abuse. You deserve to thrive!

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