For many people, religion is one of the first frameworks through which they learn how to understand the world.
It can teach us what is right and wrong, what gives life meaning, how to treat other people, how to cope with suffering, and where we belong. Religious communities can offer connection, tradition, identity, and a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves. For people who continue practicing their faith, these aspects of religion can remain deeply meaningful throughout adulthood.
But religion can also shape something even more personal: the way we understand ourselves.
When religious beliefs and practices are introduced during childhood, they become intertwined with the development of our identity, morality, relationships, and sense of safety. This isn’t inherently harmful. In fact, many children grow up within religious traditions without experiencing significant psychological distress.
The problem arises when religious teachings or environments become associated with fear, shame, conditional love, rigid control, or the belief that certain parts of oneself are fundamentally wrong.
This is where religious trauma can begin to take shape.
What Does Religion Teach Us About Ourselves?
Growing up religious often involves more than attending services or learning a set of beliefs. Religion can function as an entire framework for understanding human existence.
It may answer questions like:
- Who am I?
- What makes someone a good person?
- What happens when I do something wrong?
- What happens after I die?
- What do I owe other people?
- What kind of relationships should I have?
- What should I do with my body and sexuality?
- What emotions are acceptable?
- What happens when I don’t know the answer?
- What happens when I disagree?
These answers can provide children with structure and stability. But because children are still developing their ability to think critically and independently, they may also internalize these teachings as absolute truths about themselves and the world.
This is particularly significant when the consequences of violating those beliefs are presented as catastrophic.
If a child learns that questioning their faith makes them sinful, that certain thoughts make them a bad person, that sexual feelings are inherently shameful, or that disobedience could lead to punishment from God, those messages don’t necessarily disappear simply because they become an adult.
They can become part of the person’s internal dialogue.
Religion Can Become a Moral Framework
One of the most powerful functions of religion is providing a moral framework.
Children are often taught distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. This can help them develop empathy, responsibility, and a sense of accountability.
But when morality becomes excessively rigid, ordinary human mistakes can start to feel like evidence of being a fundamentally bad person.
Instead of:
“I did something wrong.”
the internal message can become:
“I am wrong.”
This distinction matters.
A person who grows up believing that mistakes, unwanted thoughts, anger, sexuality, doubt, or other aspects of being human are morally dangerous may develop an intense fear of making mistakes. They may become perfectionistic, excessively self-critical, or preoccupied with whether they are “good enough.”
Sometimes this can look like anxiety. Sometimes it looks like chronic guilt or shame. Sometimes it shows up as difficulty making decisions because every choice feels like a potential moral failure.
Religion Can Become a Source of Belonging
Religious communities can provide an incredibly powerful sense of belonging.
For a child, however, belonging to a religious community may not feel optional. Their family, friends, school, traditions, holidays, and social network may all exist within that community.
This means that religious identity can become intertwined with attachment and belonging.
“If I don’t believe this, will my family still accept me?”
“If I disagree, will I still belong?”
“If I leave, who will I have?”
For some people, these aren’t hypothetical questions. Losing one’s religious identity can mean losing relationships, community, cultural traditions, or even family support.
As a result, questioning one’s beliefs may create an enormous psychological conflict.
A person may simultaneously experience:
“I don’t believe this anymore.”
and
“I can’t afford to stop believing this.”
That conflict can be incredibly distressing.
Religion Can Shape Our Relationship With Fear
Many religious traditions contain teachings about consequences, judgment, punishment, sin, death, or the afterlife. For some people, these teachings provide a sense of accountability or spiritual meaning.
For others, particularly when introduced through fear during childhood, they can create a persistent sense of danger.
A child may not have the developmental capacity to understand theological concepts abstractly. Instead, they may experience them literally and emotionally.
The result can be a nervous system that learns:
There are consequences for getting this wrong.
And when the stakes feel eternal, there is no room for uncertainty.
This can contribute to chronic anxiety, obsessive reassurance-seeking, hypervigilance, and difficulty tolerating uncertainty later in life. Even after someone intellectually rejects a particular belief, their emotional response to that belief may persist.
Knowing “I don’t believe I’m going to hell” and feeling “I’m terrified I’m going to hell” are two very different experiences.
Religion Can Influence Our Relationship With Our Bodies
Religious teachings about sexuality, gender, modesty, marriage, reproduction, and bodily autonomy can become particularly influential because they intersect with identity and development.
For some people, religious teachings provide meaningful values and boundaries around sexuality.
For others, growing up with messages that their bodies, sexual feelings, gender expression, or desires are sinful or dangerous can create profound shame.
A person may learn to experience their own body as something that needs to be monitored and controlled rather than something they can inhabit comfortably.
They may struggle with questions like:
“Am I allowed to want this?”
“Am I still a good person if I feel this way?”
“Can I trust myself?”
“Is my body something I should feel ashamed of?”
These messages can follow someone into adulthood, affecting sexuality, relationships, body image, self-esteem, and their ability to experience pleasure without guilt.
Religion Can Teach Us to Distrust Ourselves
Perhaps one of the more complicated effects of rigid religious environments is the possibility of losing trust in one’s own internal experiences.
If children are repeatedly taught that their feelings, desires, doubts, or instincts are unreliable or that external religious authority knows better than they do, they may learn to look outside themselves for permission to trust what they think and feel.
This can make adulthood surprisingly difficult.
They may struggle to answer, “What do I actually want?”
Not what their family or religious community wants. Not what would make them a “good” person or what would prevent someone else from being disappointed.
Just: “What do I want?”
For someone who has spent years suppressing or questioning their internal experiences, developing an authentic sense of self can take considerable time.
When Faith and Identity Become Entangled
Religious trauma isn’t necessarily about disagreeing with a particular religious belief.
Sometimes the difficult part is what happens when a person’s identity begins to change.
Someone may leave their religion and feel relieved, only to discover that they also feel grief.
They may miss the community. They may miss rituals and traditions. They may miss the version of themselves who felt certain about the world. They may even miss God.
Leaving can therefore involve a complicated mixture of freedom, grief, anger, guilt, loneliness, confusion, and relief.
And someone doesn’t necessarily have to leave their religion to experience these conflicts.
A person can remain deeply religious while questioning certain teachings, struggling with their relationship with their faith community, or trying to reconcile their beliefs with parts of themselves that their religious upbringing taught them to reject.
Religious identity is not always an all-or-nothing experience.
Healing Doesn’t Always Have to Mean Rejecting Faith
For someone experiencing religious trauma, healing doesn’t necessarily require abandoning religion.
Sometimes healing means leaving a faith tradition that is no longer healthy for you.
Sometimes it means finding a different religious community.
Sometimes it means maintaining your faith while separating it from the shame and fear you learned alongside it.
And sometimes it means figuring out what you believe for the first time, without someone else telling you what you’re supposed to believe.
The goal isn’t necessarily to become religious or nonreligious.
The goal is to develop a relationship with yourself in which your worth isn’t contingent on being perfect, unquestioningly obedient, or free from doubt.
Being a whole, complicated, imperfect human being is not something you need to earn.
Seek An Individual Therapist at Yellow Chair Collective in Los Angeles or New York
If you are seeking therapy specifically tailored to your needs, consider reaching out to the therapists at Yellow Chair Collective. We understand that there may be unique contextual factors that may influence your experiences.
At our Los Angeles, CA, and New York City, NY-based therapy practice, we have many skilled, trauma-informed, and culturally sensitive therapists who can provide an empowering therapeutic experience. For your added convenience and simplicity, we offer online therapy for anyone in the state of California or New York. We know that navigating your mental health journey can be challenging, and we want to support you along the way. Follow the steps below to begin.
- Fill out the contact form to get connected with us.
- Get matched with one of our culturally sensitive therapists.
- Start the next step in your healing journey today.
Other Services at Yellow Chair Collective
There are many options for treatment using online therapy in California and New York, it just depends on what you’re needing. And while we certainly service Asian American folks, we also work with individuals from other cultures, too. So, whether you’re needing support in overcoming anxiety, burnout, trauma, or PTSD, we can help. Likewise, we serve teens and couples in need of support, too. So when you start online therapy with us, you can bring your whole self, including past struggles, cultural impacts, and more.
