Break Free: Finding Joy While Healing from Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse

“If this is all there is to the Christian life, I’m not sure I can do it anymore,” I prayed in a moment of deep pain and weakness.

My 17-year-old self was feeling dried up and spiritually dead, isolated in the midst of a bunch of smiling, happy people in my training center. What is wrong with me? I wondered. Why do all these people around me look so happy when I’m doing the same things they are, but I'm feeling dead inside?Am I doing it all wrong? Where is my joy?

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had been born and raised in a high-control religious group that claimed to be “Christian” in practice, but operated out of shame, guilt, and fear, rather than joy. Many of the shiny, happy people around me, I would later learn, were also trying to convince themselves that they were blessed and fulfilled as they privately battled the same internal questions. 

As time went on, many of my friends went on to break free from all forms of spirituality, because religion no longer felt safe. It had been used to control and isolate them, rather than to build joy and deep satisfaction in relationships. As I went through my own healing, I began to realize that, while I was able to break free from my high-control group, the religious trauma I experienced was still controlling my ability to find joy and build safe, secure attachment in relationships. Shame, fear, guilt, and anger were familiar; joy felt foreign and incredibly unsafe. 

This is what religious trauma does: It takes the things that should be safe and makes them feel unsafe. Trauma can rewire our brains so that what feels safe may not actually be safe—and what is safe can feel unfamiliar or risky at first.

When fear feels safe

Fear serves a very good purpose. Fear warns our bodies when things are “off” or deeply wrong. While this is healthy and necessary for short periods of survival, once experienced in longer-term spiritual abuse or religious trauma, it becomes a way of life. How else would we have survived to break free from the high-control environment? But our fear trigger becomes sensitive to the slightest whisper of wind. If someone repeats a phrase that we often heard in our group, or gives us a similar facial expression or tone of voice to our abusive leader, or repeats a verse that was used to beat us down, our fear trigger kicks into overdrive and assumes everything is a threat. This drives us to abandon relationships and isolate ourselves from anything that feels like a very real threat. Bottom line: Fear didn’t show up to ruin your life; it showed up to keep you alive. It just didn’t get the memo that the danger has changed. 

Why joy feels unsafe

After trauma, anything joyous begins to feel unsafe, as we wait for the other shoe to drop. We’ve learned through painful experiences that relationships with religious leaders or followers are one-way, faith doesn’t nourish but will leave us vulnerable, and joy (often known as love bombing in high-control groups) is contrived for the sake of manipulation to pull others into the group. Sometimes joy is blocked not only by fear, but by anger that was never allowed a voice—anger at leaders, systems, or even God.

Joy is not only possible, but necessary after Religious Trauma

Experiencing joy is not optional or a nice-to-have in life: it is necessary for our healing! When babies are born, joy is necessary for their survival and for building a secure connection with their caretaker. Without this focused love and growing joy, babies will experience what experts term a failure to thrive. Building joy with their mom will help them to grow in emotional attachment as they feel their mom is glad to be with them, rejoicing in their smiles, facial expressions, and movement. If mom is emotionally unavailable or only responsive part of the time, the baby is unable to build joy through a secure attachment, and fear often becomes the dominant driver in their future relationships. 

If you’re a survivor of less-than-perfect parenting, or thinking, “I’ve doomed my kids,” don’t worry. No child on earth has ever had a perfect parent, and regrettably, you won’t break the world’s record to become the first perfect parent either.

Perfection is not required to build a secure attachment, but an ability to build internal joy is. The fruit of trauma involves isolation, shame, guilt, anger, and disconnection. While it’s possible for our cognitive brains to recognize the trauma, our bodies won’t heal without internalizing this joy. Building internal joy is essential to our healing process and enables our bodies to reverse the trauma as we build safer, more secure attachments with others. 

Isn’t joy a form of denial?If you’ve ever wondered this, you’re not alone. Trauma has a way of blocking joy, because joy feels irresponsible–like smiling before you’ve triple-checked for danger. Joy feels like I’m denying the truth in my body that something bad happened to me. Often, this is what high-control groups will attempt to do: minimize the reality of your pain, and paste a false smile or joy over top of that pain like a cheap Band-Aid over a deep wound. It just won’t stick and is, frankly, offensive. Yes, there may be moments of happiness or what feels like small joys, but fear, sadness, or despair remain our body’s natural resting state. Learning to feel joy again does not mean returning to unsafe people, beliefs, or systems. Joy and discernment can coexist.

How can I build joy in recovering from high-control groups?

If joy feels inaccessible—or even threatening—that doesn’t mean you’re failing at building joy during high control group recovery. It means your nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do to survive. The path to building joy is both extremely simple and incredibly difficult in trauma recovery. It’s learning to stop, notice, and enjoy the very small, simple pleasures of life: a sunbeam shining through the dark clouds, a bird singing just outside of your window, a song on the radio that sparks joy, or the smile from a friend that communicates, “I’m so happy to be with you!” 

As you build an awareness of these small moments that bring joy, learn to ask yourself, “Where do I feel this joy in my body? What is my body communicating to me at this moment? Am I feeling more at peace or do I have anxiety as I notice this joy?” Then begin to be aware of how your body feels in moments of peace, as opposed to moments of chaos. Gradually, your definition of what your trauma deems as safe or unsafe will begin to change, so that joy becomes a more natural resting state for your soul. Seems doable… until trauma enters the room, pulls up a chair, and starts rearranging the furniture. Trauma keeps us from recognizing what we feel in our bodies, adding to the complication of building joy internally.

How can I find support for high control group recovery?

If this process is difficult for you, please know that you don’t have to do this alone. While it might feel safer to try to isolate yourself and heal on your own, remember that this might be your trauma talking to you! Talk to a therapist who understands religious trauma, or a good friend who has walked the path ahead of you and can hold your pain in tension with your desire to heal. If and when you’re ready, support doesn’t have to mean diving in all at once. It’s okay to heal slowly. If you live in North Carolina, I’d love to walk beside you on this journey, either virtually or in-person at my office in North Charlotte. Please check out my therapy bio and reach out for a consultation: https://www.counselingcharlotte.org/beverly-burrell.