Can Religion Give You PTSD?

For The New Republic, Stephanie Russel-Kraft reports on the “exvangelical” movement and trauma that many who have left conservative evangelical communities experience. She writes, “Erin Dirkson, an ex-evangelical, still struggles with a fear of abandonment she developed as a result of her childhood church’s focus on the imminent rapture.” Laura Anderson, a therapist who founded the Religious Trauma Institute, says, “This is trauma, the same way trauma manifests from sexual violence or war. We’re talking about, in a way, brainwashing. Doctrines taught over and over and over with consequences that are eternal and terrifying.”

Read at The New Republic

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