Religious Trauma & Cult Recovery Blog

Today, we're diving into a topic near and dear to my heart as a trauma therapist: attachment styles. Understanding your attachment style can be a powerful tool in navigating your relationships and personal growth. There are four primary attachment styles – secure, ...

By Dr. Quincee Gideon, PsyD 

We love de-mystifying cults over here at Traumastery, and one of the best ways to do so is to point out similarities so they don’t seem quite as “untouchable” and “mystical.”

While many cults may have very similar qualities, not all...

Let’s break down all of the religious trauma themes that we see in the film Women Taking. Trigger warning: sexual assault

I’m Dr. Quincee Gideon and I’m a clinical psychologist and educator specializing in religious trauma and cult abuse recovery. I want to point...

At first, connecting religious trauma and perfectionism might feel like a bit of a mental reach. But most of the high-control groups that religious trauma survivors endured were overrun with high demands for perfectionistic behavior and that tends to have a really negative impacts on ones mental...

Perfectionism is a powerful anxious response that so many of us walk around with in our everyday life. We don't always fully understand why we can be so mean and demanding of ourselves and it can be helpful to understand perfectionism from a trauma-informed lens.

Gaining Control

Perfectionism can...

Deconstruction from religion is a process that many people go through when they begin to question their belief system. The stages of deconstruction can vary from person to person, but some common stages include:

1. Doubt

This stage begins with questioning certain aspects of one's religion or...