Religious Trauma & Cult Recovery Blog

Let’s talk about when church/religious communities become manipulative and abusive. Deborah Layton, a survivor of Jim Jone’s Peoples Temple said that “No one joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization.” The same goes for...

The 4F trauma responses represent a way of thinking about trauma and the different ways it can show up in the aftermath of severe abandonment, abuse, and neglect. This “trauma typology” was introduced by CPTSD expert Pete Walker, LMFT. I love this framework because it provides the...

Today we are talking about narcissism. What is narcissism, you ask? Narcissism is described as extreme self-involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those around them. While everyone can show signs of narcissistic behavior, a true narcissist has difficulty...

The holidays can be a dysregulating time, especially if you’ve experienced trauma. A lot of things could be impacting this dysregulation:

• Disruption in your routine 

• Traveling

• Attend group events that you don’t regularly attend (religious services, parties, large family...

We get a lot of requests for recommendations, so this week we want to share some books on religious trauma that our Woven therapists recommend!

Helen Jun- Helen recommends You are Your Own: Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity by Jamie Finch.

“Rooted in her...

Religious trauma is a specific kind of trauma that happens within religious or spiritual spaces. That means religious spaces, rituals, beliefs, members, and leaders can all be the perpetrators of trauma. You can read more about what defines religious trauma here. Religious trauma is...