Why Your Church Called Your Anxiety "Demonic" (And Why They Lied) Ann Russo

If you’ve ever been told your depression was a "lack of faith," or that your boundary-setting was "rebellion," this episode is for you.

In this powerful episode of the Unholier Podcast, we sit down with therapist and author Ann Russo to unpack the deep, often invisible scars of religious trauma. Far from just being "dramatic," religious trauma is a calculated form of conditioning. High-control belief systems are systematically designed to override your identity, value obedience over intuition, and frame legitimate mental health struggles as spiritual failures.

Ann breaks down why religious trauma is an ongoing system rather than a single event, and how it manifests as nervous system dysregulation, chronic self-doubt, and fractured relationships. We also dive into the dark side of high-control churches—including how they weaponize mental health by labeling trauma responses as "demonic" to maintain control.

But healing is possible. Anne introduces her groundbreaking Religious Trauma Treatment Model (RTTM), a structured approach focused on somatic healing, nervous system regulation, and rebuilding your autonomy on your own terms. Whether you choose to stay, leave, or rebuild your faith entirely, this conversation offers practical steps to reclaim your boundaries and honor your evolving self.

✨ About Our Guest:

Ann Russo is a licensed therapist, author, and creator of the Religious Trauma Treatment Model (RTTM), dedicated to helping survivors heal from high-control environments and reclaim their autonomy.

#ReligiousTrauma #Deconstruction #ExEvangelical #ChurchTrauma #MentalHealthMatters #ReligiousTraumaSyndrome #SpiritualAbuse #UnholierPodcast #TherapyTok #NervousSystemHealing

https://tally.so/r/nPKdOd

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

What if the thing you were told would save you is actually the thing that broke you? What if the anxiety, the shame, the constant second-guessing of your own thoughts isn't a personal failure but conditioning? Welcome back to the Unholier Podcast. Today's episode is not for the faint of heart, because we're not just talking about religion. We're talking about what happens when belief systems override identity, when obedience is praised over intuition, and when fear gets dressed up as faith. If you've ever been told to pray about it instead of process it, if you've ever felt guilty for asking questions, or you've ever wondered why walking away felt both freeing and terrifying, you're not crazy and you're definitely not alone. Today I'm sitting down with therapist and author Anne Russo, who specializes in religious trauma and helps people reclaim their autonomy after high control belief systems. She's also the creator of RTTM, a therapeutic model designed to help people actually process the trauma, not just spiritually bypass it. So if you're ready to challenge the narrative, unlearn what no longer serves you, and maybe feel a little less alone in the process, then let's get started. So my first question is going to be about religious trauma, because of course on this channel, we have a lot of people who either are still within a church or a cult or religious organization, or they have come out of that, they've deconstructed or are in the process of deconstruction. And many of us have experienced religious trauma. And so for somebody who's listening who thinks religious trauma is so dramatic sounding, what actually qualifies as religious trauma so that people listening can truly understand that it's not a dramatic term at all?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

No, no, it's not. So think of it as harm. Really, you know, like and what separates religious trauma from other forms of trauma, like let's say, like a car accident or a shooting, and by no means do I put that down. I mean, that's horrible trauma. Religious trauma isn't a single event. Religious trauma is an entire system where you're continuously going through the experience of being traumatized and oftentimes not even realizing it. And then the impact of how it impacts your nervous system, how there's dysregulation, there's lack of self-trust, it impacts your relationships, it can create uh mental health crises, it's self-esteem issues. It's so, I mean, it's a it's a very real thing that happens when you are in an environment that's consistently telling you how to be and how to think, and there's eternal consequences to it.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

And I've heard a lot of people say, oh, well, if you're suffering from anxiety or depression or any of those mental health issues, which would be a result of religious trauma, right? They always claim it's a spiritual problem. You need to be praying more, you need to be in the scriptures more. Maybe your faith isn't strong enough. And they put it, they put even more burden on the person. Like you're already experiencing all this, and then they're like, and also it's your fault.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Really? Yeah, exactly. But that's the injury, right? That's the trauma, is it's you can't even trust yourself at all. Your anxieties because your spirituality isn't strong enough. What do you do with something like that when everyone around you is telling you that?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah, well, even the Bible says lean not into your own understanding. Yeah. And it also says, don't trust your heart. Your heart is deceitful. It's like, okay, I have this supposed God-given intuition, and I'm not even able to use it because I can't trust myself. Like how that doesn't even make sense.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

And there's your trauma intersection right there. So long-term effects of religious trauma in the body. You said it affects the nervous system. Can you expand on that a little bit? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

So think of the nervous system as something that's unconsciously running. So you may not even be fully aware of the impact of things. So let's say that you come from a high control religious system and you clock maybe a religious symbol, right? You've left the you left the church or you're trying to figure that out. You clock it, but you clock it subconsciously. What do you mean by that? I mean, like, you may like we we see and experience things all the time in our senses that we don't necessarily clock, right? Like there might be like a smell that reminds us of something, but we're we're not really clocking that. Oh, this smell reminds me of this particular event.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Okay. So you're saying kind of it's kind of like a trigger. It's subconsciously, you're absorbing it as connection to this.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, like it's so you may not even be aware that it's a trigger. That's the thing that's kind of funny about it. Funny in not in an ironic way, I suppose. Yeah, right. Like, like you're not necessarily aware that it that it is. So it impacts your body, it impacts your nervous system, your somatic system. So you may feel sick, you may feel really anxious, you may not know why, you may be in a bad mood, you may have a panic attack, uh, you fight with your husband later on that day, and it's all related back to that experience, and because you your nervous system has become dysregulated, but you don't necessarily know that's what it is. So it's like there's such a deep level of awareness of that needs to happen about how your nervous system works, how it responds to the world around you. Does that make sense what I just said?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, it makes total sense. Because I was just thinking in terms of like symbols or like whatever would affect sort of the five senses, right? So you say you mentioned a smell. So I guess if somebody was experienced religious trauma in like the Catholic Church where they have the incense and all of that, maybe like if they smelled something similar or something that had that smell that might trigger them or give them some kind of a reaction system, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Because so back when I worked with kids, there was a client who would he was maybe four or five years old, and he would flip out when he would go to Target with his grandma. And no one could figure out what was going on. My gosh, I love Target. I can't imagine, he would flip out, and in time, what was discovered was that his abuser wore a certain perfume that he would smell in Target, which would cause his nervous system to dysregulate. So he's five, you know, he's not going, but this is the perfume of my abuser. I feel upset, right? It's just smell clocks, nervous system clocks it, reaction, dysregulation. So we're doing that all the time. And smell is actually one of our strongest senses. That is so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah. So just because of how I was raised in the independent fundamental Baptist cult, uh, if somebody is having a visceral reaction to say, like, you know, I you and I talked on the episode that I did with you last year, how I had to attend my father's funeral at the church that I was raised in. And so that was a not only is like attending a family member's funeral difficult, but you're also then going into the place where I experienced a lot of abuse growing up and even into my first marriage. And so it it was like I was having like panic, it's like I was like screaming inside, but I couldn't leave. I knew that I had to do it. I had, I had to just get through it. It was just part of it. And but I couldn't wait to get out of there. And just from what I heard growing up, a lot of people like, if you are having this kind of emotional reaction when you walk into a church, that's demonic. That's like the demons or the evil spirits that are, or you're quenching the Holy Spirit, and that means you have a spiritual issue because you're having a visceral reaction to a place of God, right? What would you say to somebody who says that?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

I know it's ridiculous, but this is a stem I no, but I but you know, but it's it's not because if, like you said, you know, you grow up believing that you don't have anything to tell you, and you don't have a way to know anything different, yeah. So it of course that's what you're going to believe. So I'm gonna take that in a different direction. I just bear with me on this. Okay. That makes sense to me in the context of religion. In history, when we don't have the understanding of something through scientific research and evidence, humans have always turned to spirituality to explain things. So the idea that you're having a demonic or spiritual reaction makes sense in a time when we didn't understand the nervous system. Makes sense in a time when we didn't understand how the body works. The issue to me is that these religious spaces that are still teaching that is they're refusing actual evidence to stay within a within a certain part of a belief system. See, I don't think it's a contradiction to say, oh, that's your nervous system, and I'm also a believer. But in the but in this space, that would be a contradiction. So to so when I look at it, I look at science teaching us about spirituality in God. And religion has always been tried to explain something that it can't really explain without the so it's like it's like it seems like they're against each other, right? But so like I would say, no, that's not. We know that this is the nervous system. We know that because of your experience in the past in this space, your body is trying to protect you from this. That's why you're having this experience, you know, and it doesn't have to be a demonic presence, it doesn't have to be that you're having a very natural physiological reaction to the experience.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah, and unfortunately, they make it seem like that it's just a spiritual issue and they don't want to look, they don't even like the word mental health therapist, and they're very much against a lot of that stuff. It's like they they almost make it seem like if you go to a therapist and not your pastor, which nine times out of ten, the pastors are not qualified to even counsel, of course not, of course not, they have like no credentials to do so, but it's like they make it seem like going to a therapist is an evil thing. Like, why would you go to a therapist and not just get in your Bible more?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

You know, totally, totally, and there, but there's a reason for that, right? The reason is that this it's a this is a system built on control, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Exactly. But I think that they also have like the stigma of, you know, you you you study psychology and who do they teach? They they teach these like Freud and people like that, who then they'll point to that and say, like, these were godless individuals, you know, and so then they put everybody under that umbrella of uh Freud and all of these other guys, and they just say, blanket, it's evil, it's bad, it's satanic, we're gonna stay away from the mental health space altogether because psychology is like woo-woo to them.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And that that to me is frightening. Oh, yeah, exactly. And why why that is is frightening is it just goes right along with the need to control the entire narrative of everything. And I personally think that if your faith in God is that strong, it should be able to stand the scrutiny of looking at different things. If your faith can't stand the scrutiny of looking at something different, then maybe there's a problem with what you have faith in. But that's that's a hard line to cross with someone who's been raised in some something and believes something and then trying to deconstruct that. It's it they haven't been given any tools to do that, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

I just I remember just how I had to put on a facade when I was in that environment, and I was miserable. I had so much anxiety and depression, and I did not have peace. I was talking to somebody yesterday about basically you don't even have the need to be a good human being because you're like, I got a golden ticket like to heaven. I'm saved, I'm good, I'm born again. I don't need to even be a better person or try to improve myself because I'm good, you know? Yeah, it's just a lot of unhealthy things being in that environment, and it just, and then you see the product of that is abuse within the church. You have all kinds of mental health issues within families and individuals within the church. I mean, there's it's just that's the byproduct of that way of thinking.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yes, yes, absolutely. And what you described about what you were feeling inside, I would guarantee you everyone felt that way inside. Because it's a it's a show, but you have to go against your yourself in order to stay uh acceptable.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Well, yeah, and you're taught that you're unworthy anyway, like you're not yeah, and um, you don't deserve anything good, you don't deserve to basically enjoy life or do what you want in life. And I just don't, I I just I feel so bad for people who are still in that environment who on a Sunday morning they gotta put on the show and they have to act like everything's great, but then the other six days of the week, they're miserable. Um it's tough, but I do want to get into deconstruction in a little bit, but how do you think growing up in such a high control religious environment shapes someone's identity long term, even after they get out? Because I know I've struggled when I got out, just even finding who I am as an individual.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Oh, totally. I bet you didn't even know what your favorite movie was. Nothing. I didn't, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're you kind of don't have one yet. You do, you know, like you like you you do underneath it all, like I believe we have souls, I believe that we are we have identities and personalities and everything, but it's underdeveloped, it wasn't allowed to be developed, so there's real, real work in that, and that, and I think that's the thing that can be so difficult is when we're talking about deconstruction or we're talking about leaving our identity, you are literally starting from scratch. What do I feel? What do I think? How do I understand what I think and what I feel? And that you are opening up yourself to some level of dysregulation in order to start even asking those questions. So, yeah, it absolutely has long-term effects, and it's something that you work on somatically, so you work on in in your body to try to calm your body down so you can start asking yourself those questions, and they may even be things that seem so simple. Where do you want to eat tonight? But it's this is not a question that you're supposed to have the answer to, you know. So it's like just finding some authorship and autonomy, even with things that feel small, is everything. You're building an identity, you're building one.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, that's so true. And I love that you said that because I feel like the person that was me back then was who they wanted me to be. That was who they molded me to be and groomed me to be. It wasn't who I truly was. I was trying to fit this mold, and I wasn't truly able to be free to explore what I liked or disliked because I was told what to like and dislike. And just it like you mentioned, like I didn't even know what my favorite movie was, I didn't even know what kind of music I liked, what kind of cocktail I liked. I mean, what could outfits that make me feel empowered as a woman, you know, things. Yeah. And so I did have to like create my own identity.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

I had to find myself. And I'm sure that there are many moments of extreme panic, anxiety, and depression around things that people who haven't been in this experience would understand. Wearing a pair of pants in public. Women don't wear pants in public. I'm gonna put on this pair of pants and have a panic attack at the store right now because I don't really know if this is the right thing or the wrong thing. So it's it's work, it's absolute work. And then it's even following what it means for you to have any kind of spiritual belief moving forward, and how do you lean in that belief? I mean, it's I mean, when we're dealing with when we're dealing with identity systems and systems of high control that many people are born into, I mean, the work is is real. I mean, it's I I think it's some of the harder work, but it's also work that can be done. And that's what I want people to know too. It's hard a hundred percent, but it's not impossible.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

What are some safety mechanisms that people can put into place if they're deconstructing? Because David and I talked about this, and we talked about the fact that it can actually be dangerous if you're just like jumping out into it with nothing to safeguard you from being isolated, even just from leaving your church community or that cult, right? And you're you have nobody, you have nothing, you then lose your identity, you don't know who you are, you're sort of a fish out of water. What are some recommendations for people who are listening that might be going through that right now?

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Thank you so much for saying that. Because I because that isolation is real, and I think that it doesn't necessarily get talked about enough. It's not so simple of, oh, just leave. Just leave. So number one, there has to be some level of a support. So as hard as it might be, finding a therapist who can do this work with you, finding other people in community that have done some deconstruction, maybe you find them online. You have to have some level of support, and you also have to have some level of uh stability. You can't be going through a huge depressive episode and then try to deconstruct faith. You like so always like in my work is the number one thing is always safety. And when I say safety, I mean internal safety and external safety before we start doing any level of deconstruction. So everything really starts with how do we breathe? How do we hold our body? Who can we talk to about these things that maybe are inside the church? How does it feel when we even mention, depending on where this person's at, that this might be a system that's controlling? What does that feel like to even acknowledge that? That can be enough to throw someone in a complete panic attack and never show up again. You know what I mean? So it's regulation, regulation, and then safety, safety.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I was just thinking about like, okay, so somebody goes to church, say, you know, every Sunday, they're used to getting up, going to church every Sunday, going through that routine, and then all of a sudden they decide to take the leap, leave, deconstruct. They're losing not only community, but they're also losing the routines. So, what would you recommend to somebody who is used to doing this routinely every single week? And then all of a sudden it's like, stop, everything stops. And then what? They're just like, What do I do with my time? What do you recommend for somebody who has those? Routine.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

So if the person has decided that that they absolutely want to leave the church, and they okay, I just want to make sure because I it's like and so careful just because people are so different where they're at, right? So let's say this person is the routine piece. You got to find something else to do. You do because you have an a neural pathway in your brain that has been created to tell you this is what I do on Sunday. I get up and I do something. Yeah, it's like a pattern. Yeah, exactly. And it's built right in there, it's built right into your brain. Like, so it's not just we'll just change the pattern. Like it's not that's not how this works. So it's like, okay, you did every Sunday you did something spiritual, religious, whatever the however that looks. What feels like something that could ideally replace that? Maybe it's community service on Sunday mornings for two hours. Maybe like you have to find something that can still kind of light up that same pathway, even though it's gonna feel weird and wrong. Because again, the pet that pathway that was formed in your brain, you're now doing something different, and that creates the feeling of weird and wrong. And so that becomes the habit.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

And they might think I'm feeling this is weird and wrong. It must be the Holy Spirit convicting me that I need to be back in church.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah, yes, absolutely, absolutely. So that's why I think it's so important to understand like how the brain works, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And but I mean, we're talking big leaps for some people here, you know, after I think like maybe finding something that you've always wanted to try, or something that would help you get your endorphins going or something, maybe like yoga or a dance class or gardening or something active, maybe would help. Would you agree with that or no?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah, I would say that it that that is very helpful to many, many people. We would just want to make sure that they're not too if they're a person who's has a lot of anxiety and panic, it may need to be like more like the yoga vibe than like the gardening vibe. You would just have to see what make it, you kind of just have to see what makes sense for your system. If you're always if you can just think in terms of like safety and regulation, there's not a necessity a right way or wrong way to do that, if it's obviously healthy things, right? But like there, it's not like, well, my way of doing that is watching a movie. Well, no, that's no, no, you know, you should be exercising. No, like it has to make sense for your system, not in an avoidant way, but in a way that really does create regulation.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah. So I have people message me quite often who are wanting to leave the church and they're scared that they're going to upset their family members, their elderly mother or their aunt so-and-so, or whatever, would just be devastated if they ever left the church. What would you say to somebody who is really deconstructing inside that environment and feels like they can't leave because it's gonna just shatter everybody's view of them and and their family?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

So, with the model that I created for therapists, to it works specifically with people in these situations too. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I definitely want to get into this for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Okay, yeah, because the thing about it is the model is not saying leave the church. And I think that that's kind of an important piece. What the model is kind of saying is let's look and understand what it means for you to hold a belief, what it means for you to have a value. How does that show up? Is it aligning here? Is it not aligning here? So, what what I would depending on the person, if that person was like, you know, I really I'm not gonna leave the church, you could still work with that. Okay, this is interesting. Yeah, yeah, I know what I mean. I mean, because what we've seen uh so far, like in the work around this, it's always get the hell out of there.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah, right. Which is what I've always recommended to people. It's like get out of that environment. Yeah, yeah. This is giving people maybe like a softer option.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yes, I'm not saying it's easy by any means to remain, but the goal that I would have as a therapist that has never been given to the person in the situation is the autonomy to choose. So I'm not gonna tell you to stay, I'm not gonna tell you to leave. I'm going to help you figure out how to do this for you, because I'm not gonna try to repeat the control that's already been laid upon you. And that's what I think we kind of have done is like, well, no, get out. Of course, that's what would I like someone to get out of that situation? Of course I would. I don't think it's healthy, but my role is to help them decide have the autonomy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, and that makes so much sense. Okay, so you and I have talked before about different methods um that have been used in therapy to help people. One of those methods is EMDR. Um, and then you developed a different method called RTTM. So explain what is RTTM, then then we'll just go into the details from there.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Okay. So it's a model that does pull from evidence-based research and other modalities, and it pulls the parts of it that work with the religious injury because what exists outside of this works on different parts of the injury, but doesn't look at the injury as a whole. Okay, I have a quick question.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah, when you say it basically targets a specific injury, is there, and maybe this is a dumb question. No, no, no. There's no questions. Is there a part of the brain that is specifically affected by religious trauma? So the version is like a different kind of trauma.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Long-term. So think of it as like long-term trauma versus like short-term trauma. So we are impacted by trauma. Our brain is absolutely impacted by trauma, but long-term trauma is gonna impact us differently than short-term trauma. So, like when you talked about EMDR, when we talked a little bit about EMDR, EMDR is great and it works more. I don't want to say it can never work for a long-term injury, but it's really designed for a short-term. Uh, you go through a very extreme traumatic event, you go do EMDR, it helps you work through that event. Religious trauma isn't an event, it's an identity, it's an entire wound. It's a this is a whole system of how you run. Uh, a car accident is not your system of how you've run. Okay. Right. So it's like, can it help? Of course. But it's not gonna build up a whole new person, it's not gonna help you understand who you are, it's not gonna help you regulate in moments when you're dysregulated around religion. But can it assist with some of the symptoms? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it can for sure. But the thing about RTTM is it's looking at all of it. It's not just, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

What does what does RTTM stand for? Religious trauma treatment model. What does that look like in a session? If somebody was to come to you and say, I've experienced religious trauma throughout my life, I really am being affected on a daily with this, or it's affecting my moods, my sleep, my whatever, what would that session look like for them?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

First, I'd be happy that they recognize they even have religious trauma because a lot of people won't even realize that they have it. So if someone comes in with that level of awareness, so there's an assessment that we do that speaks specifically to the six domains of work, and the domains are uh body and safety, education, beliefs, values, practices, and then what you decide spiritually for yourself in order to keep following that path that you've created for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

And so those six things are on this assessment that they're taking, and then you're kind of seeing what needs to be focused on the most, assessing like how bad the religious trauma is. What is it telling you?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

It so yeah, it does tell me how bad the religious trauma is and which domain is most impacted, but it we always follow the same order because of the way that the system works. So we're always doing safety first, no matter what. We're never skipping safety, we're never skipping the body, we're always doing that work, and that work it will follow us through each domain, too, because we always want to ensure the person is regulated. Because if you start opening up, like if you know, if I said to you, okay, well, you have this belief that women are supposed to be good wives, even if they're in an abusive situation, or it's this is the situation they're called to, we would start dissecting that. Where did that come from? When did you first hear that? So it is this an inherited belief, or is this your belief? And it takes time to like process through all of these things, and then your body's gonna react. Can you give me an example of one of the questions? Yeah, like it might so the questions are yes or no, but the clinician uses it more as like a narrative. So it might be like, how do you feel when someone talks about a religion that's different than the one you grew up in? What happens? How do you feel? And you kind of and is it do you feel is that a good feeling, a bad feeling? Like, what's going on? Do you you know, like you so you're just kind of getting like, well, what's going on? When someone holds a different value, do you feel like you've chosen your own values? Yes, okay, you talk to me about it, and then you just start to deduce, well, what's going on here? Like you're you're just gathering information, so it's really just helping to understand where the person is most dysregulated. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

And then based on the result of the assessment, then you know how many times they need to come in for this or how deep you need to go with it.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

It helps to see if it's working more than it's necessarily how long it's going to take. Okay. Like, yeah, so it's like there's an there's an assessment for each domain, it's shorts, just a couple questions, and you do it before you enter that domain, and when the domain is over, and you kind of see, like, well, has this person improved? Has dysregulation improved? Are they do they feel safer? Do they feel better? Do they have a better understanding of this thing? You want to just kind of so it's we want to make sure that we're staying in the evidence of the work. We don't want to just, okay, well, you seem better. You know what I mean? Like, we want to see, like, are we actually seeing progress? The first time you take that assessment, it does help the clinician say, Oh, okay, this person has a lot of dysregulation. We're probably gonna have to pull in safety even more into this. We're gonna have to pull in somatic exercises even more. So it gives it gives a clinical, a little bit of a clinical map at the level, but um, the work is always the same, it's the same every time, no matter what the person comes in for, because you're always looking at a moral injury, being forced to think and feel a specific way that may be counterintuitive to actually who you are, and then you're always trying to help build up autonomy. But that might show, but that might show up in different ways. It might show up as the woman who comes in and says, I need to stay with my husband. It might come up to the person who's very people pleasing, it might show up as religious scrupulosity or fear of dying or having to or praying too much because they're they just can't stop praying because they're afraid of dying. Like it's gonna show up how it's gonna show up, it's gonna show up in a theme, but underneath all of that is that moral injury and that loss of autonomy. So you're always working that you're just doing it through the theme in which they brought into the session.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Okay. So when they do the assessment and they come in for a treatment, what does the treatment look like? Walk us through that because I know, like with EMDR, sometimes there's like tapping or movement of some sort, and you're following a person's finger or object, yeah. Um, to kind of get you into that mindset. But what does the RTTM look like in a session?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

So it is mostly talk therapy, but it has somatic therapy, which is the body. It also has a lot of behavioral therapy involved, but it's not, it's not like there's like special movements or things that you do or anything. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

So so you don't have like a person close their eyes and imagine a scenario and you're talking them through it, or is it yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do that.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. So, like it's like so it's six, it's six domains regulate, educate, clarify, align, practice, and sustain. And inside each of those domains, there's a safety exercise. That's the first thing that that is done that's very low stakes. It's not necessarily even religion attached to religion, it's just to see how a person is able to handle thinking about values in general, how a person is able to practice doing something that makes them uncomfortable that has nothing to do with religion, how they re-how they start to understand their body when maybe they're stressed out at work. You're you're not just jumping into the religion because you know, as we talked about earlier, it's very powerful and it's very dysregulating. So, you know, you have to be careful. And then once you they're able to do the soft entry exercise and learn from that, then you move into the intervention of that domain, and then it has very specific exercises that are done that are like I call them components, and you follow these components, you do them in session. It could take a week, it could take six months to do a component, it just depends on the impact of that particular thing that we're working on, right? So, like someone looking at their own value system that may be extremely difficult and it could take a long time, right? And we also don't never want to overwhelm a system either. So it's a very poignant, like example. Someone comes in, like I said, that is working on what's the message around marriage. If they start going somewhere else, I'm not gonna do that with them because it's gonna be too overwhelming for their system. Let's just talk about what's the message that you received, what's the inherited belief that you received about marriage in your church? Talk to me about that. Where did that come from? Like we would stick in what it what I am godly because I stay in my marriage. Dissect that list, dissect that. What does I am godly mean? So it's like it's it's slow, right? But it has to be because it's you have been formed in this, yeah, you know, so it's not it's it's not like okay, well, I you know, I think that car is this an ugly car, and it's not I mean, this is like deep work that taking yeah, for sure, yeah, very and very structured work, and never in those conversations is well, let's leave the church. The person as they're doing this work decides what makes sense for them.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Do you find that is often the conclusion after a while?

SPEAKER_00 39:04

It's very difficult to stay in an environment that demands a certain level of control and wants basically to for you to hand over your autonomy to them. It's so once you start starting to think about things on your own, it's it is very hard to stay in an environment. Yeah, so it's not the foregone conclusion, but it's difficult. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, you know, like I had a client once who who still held the beliefs and stayed in the church, but would have to leave during certain parts of sermons, and so he didn't become dysregulated around self-worth. So it's like it's like there's things there, you know, but it isn't, but that's the trauma is still the religious trauma.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Yeah, yeah. So if somebody heals from religious trauma, if they if they're like, okay, good, what does that actually look like for them? They hear their own voice. Yeah, instead of the voice of the preacher. Yeah, yeah, they hear their own voice. Yeah, yeah, they don't have that like that obligation and that control and that fear anymore. Is that what you're saying? It's decreased significantly. Yeah, I don't want to say it's gone, but it's decreased. Do you think that somebody who is healed from religious trauma maybe physically they could walk into a church building and not feel any visceral reaction to it?

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yes, and I think the term visceral is real really important because I'm not gonna say you wouldn't have any reaction, but you wouldn't feel a trauma reaction, the visceral reaction can be more a memory than a full body experience. Okay, I have a lot of work to do, Ann. If I'm being totally transparent, y'all, I am not there to try listen to honestly to me, this is the hardest. This is the hardest work to do. Look what we're really talking about, you know. I mean, everything about how you're formed and what is used, life and death, God, external here, eternity. I mean, these are these are the the biggest questions that humans grapple with existence, you know. So and you've been told what existence is, you've been told what eternity is, you've been told what it means to be a human, and now you're gonna start to question it, and you've been told that even just the thought that something could be off is enough to give you a panic attack. I mean, this is no easy work, no, it's yeah, so I mean, I we carry I think we'll we carry this, we will carry this, but it but it doesn't have to control us in the same way. But this is for lack of better term, and it kind of does become your cross to bear. Yeah, no pun intended though. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, but really, I mean it's a thing that shaped you.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

What are some practical ways that people can rebuild trust within themselves?

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Small practice steps. So like I was talking about the domains earlier. I have a pro the practice domain, and it's practicing things first that are not religious based, and then practicing things that may be more tied to your values and your um beliefs, but small, small things like we're talking earlier when it's like uh choosing a restaurant, say no to something that makes you uncomfortable. Especially, you know, uh the uh women tend to have fallen in high control religious systems, they tend to be uh put into people pleasing, taking care of everybody positions. So to be able to say no, I don't want to do that, that's huge. And it may feel so little. That's the thing, too. Like it may you may think, Oh, I am not gonna going to assist someone with this thing because I have to do this other thing. And you may think, Well, that wasn't what that's no big deal. I just said no to something. It's tremendous when you've been told your whole life that that is something that you do not do. You are always available mentally, emotionally, and physically for whatever anybody else needs. So to be able to put a boundary up, that is an incredible success.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Yeah, it really is, especially as a woman. Yes. Yeah. Cause we're with a lot of responsibility is put on us to take care of the family, to take care of the husband, to take care. And we're the ones that, and now there's this whole movement where you have like the trad wife thing is trending on social media. And like life wasn't hard enough for us, ladies. And now all of a sudden we're having to like garden and keep bees and have our own vegetables and milk our own cows. For God's sakes, make our own freaking clothes and everything else.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Oh my gosh. No, but you know the thing that's funny too about that is I would say if that is what you genuinely autonomously choose, fine. But are you? That's the thing. Like it, I feel like we are taught exactly how to think and how to behave, period, in our culture. Add that high control religious factor on top of that. That's a lot of deconstruction, a lot of work to do. But you may find you may find yourself, you know what? I do want to be a stay-at-home parent. Okay, great. Because you got there.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Yeah. And that's something that you chose to do versus something that you were told that you were gonna do. Yes. I also worry about women specifically, who women and girls who feel like that's the only thing that they can bring value into this world, like is being all of these things and not just being who they are and being loved unconditionally and accepted for who they are, regardless of if they can go milk their own cow and make their own milk. Totally, yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

There is a lot of work that needs to still happen in this area. It I yeah, I have a lot of passion around that too, because women we have our voice stolen, we don't even realize that we have had it stolen a lot of times, and then we perpetuate that as well, which is really unfortunate and also psychologically understandable how that happens, you know. So it's it's you know, conversations like this, hopefully that people just start thinking, you know what I mean? If we can just get people thinking, then we're moving in the right direction. Do I do what do I feel? What do I think? Why do I feel this way? Why do I think this way? Right. Yeah. Asking those questions.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

And it's hard to even ask those questions because you're taught you're not allowed to. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Exactly, exactly. That's why, like, that's why, like, when it comes to the religious trauma, it's the that first move is just the safety in order to even think about thinking about asking the question.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Definitely. So I want to get back to the family members, right? The the obligation to stay, I experienced a level of that myself. Um, my dad was a pastor, um, I was a youth pastor's wife um during my first marriage. So the obligation to stay was very strong. So if somebody who is having this internal struggle, this existential crisis, and they're in church and they feel stuck, how can they navigate those relationships with family members who are still deeply religious? Whether they stay in or they get out, maybe more so like people who have gotten out but still want to have a relationship with family members who are still deeply religious. I know for me, just speaking on what I did, I actually sat down and had a conversation with my parents. And I said, you know, I was an adult woman, I was 27 at the time that I left.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

That doesn't mean you could have been 57. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Conversations of your life. Oh, yeah. It was very hard. And I was scared. And I basically told them, I said, Look, I love you guys. I appreciate, you know, how you raised me and you know, very moral, high morals and all of this stuff. But at the end of the day, like I'm an adult woman, I'm going to make my decisions for myself from here on out. I've I literally did every single thing you wanted me to do my entire life. And this is the end result of it was being in abusive marriage and being miserable and having to navigate all of this stuff for the long term. And it didn't just end with the divorce, of course, because then I had to co-parent with the guy for 18 years, um, which was a nightmare in and of itself. So I I had the the conversation with them, like I did everything you wanted me to do and was this person you wanted me to be. And now I'm going to be me and who I discover who who I am and what I like and what I want to believe. And we can either you can accept that and we can have like a really great relationship, or you can not accept it, and we can just have a surface level relationship. Like you're not gonna know my personal life and know me on that level. And it took a while for my dad to come around, but he finally did. My mom's always been very accepting and and loving and and all of those things. But you know, my dad, I think his beliefs are a little bit more stringent because he was raised in multi-generational pastors' families. So um, it was more ingrained in him in that way. And so it was like, oh, you can't go outside this box. I have a child that's going outside this box, I put her in. But ultimately, when I did that, once we got over that hump of him sort of having to unravel whatever paradigm he had of me, our relationship was stronger than ever. And so that's how I navigated it. I have extended family members who have never accepted me the way that I am now. They, you know, they've labeled me as a black sheep of the family, and I'm okay with that. That's their choice, and that's something that they have to figure out on their own. But I was able to do that with my parents. So I'm super grateful for that. But it do you have any advice for somebody who might have left or is about to leave? And they're just trying to navigate these relationships with people who are still deeply religious.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Yeah, yeah. And thank you for sharing that because that was really powerful. And I think what you just said is the actually the answer. It is having a boundary, knowing that it's gonna be hard and knowing that it may or may not be accepted and you still hold that boundary because the minute you let that boundary go is the minute that people feel they can pull you back in. Right? So it it's learning how if you if if you're someone who struggles with boundaries in other ways, start learning how to build boundaries, period. Because if that's hard for you and your first move is a boundary around religion, it may be very difficult to hold that boundary, right? So it's like, what do you actually need and then build it almost somewhere else first because it's easier, and then you get to the point where you can do exactly what you did. And and I think you know, you saying this was the hardest conversation of my life, this is was not easy. I was scared, yes, exactly. And it would be weird if you weren't right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

I mean, because again, going back to this is like your identity, this is it your identity that was given to you, but also like your entire community, yes, um exactly, and that's what people maybe are afraid to lose. They're afraid to lose everything they've ever known, or and and that's the problem with these environments is that a lot of times they are very isolating and they make it to where that's all you have. Yep, and that's very unhealthy because it it's oh it almost makes it harder to leave because you oh absolutely, and that's very intentional.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Like when you I mean, I talk a lot about this in the book because it's I mean, it's a perfect structure of control to keep you isolated and in it and following and adhering to the rules of the structure, and you adhere to it so well that you are now part, you you become the structure in a sense. You adhere to it so well that you don't even need the structure to adhere to it anymore. You're holding yourself accountable the same way the structure would, and then you start holding other people accountable the way the structure would, in order to feel safe within the structure yourself. So everyone is doing this gay, but no one's saying it.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

So if somebody's listening who's a parent and they're like, I don't want to throw it all away. I have kids that I would like to be raised in a Christian home or a moral, higher moral environment. What kind of suggestions would you have for them? But they're nervous that they may experience religious trauma if they go the same path they were raised in.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

I totally understand that. And the beautiful thing, especially since we're speaking about Christianity specifically, there are many thousands upon thousands of different denominations of Christianity. So this isn't a throw out Jesus vibes, this is a throw out the trauma of the structure and the authoritativeness of the system, not the faith. And I know that like it's so it's like trying to like separate that because if you can be in a in a church environment where you're allowed to think you're you can be in a church environment where you can disagree on the meaning of something in scripture. You can, you know what I mean? Like you can that exists. So it's what you're looking for is there. It you and you see it by the by the freedoms of the debate.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Oh, you I think that is so important to to have an environment where you're not just in an echo chamber. I think that's where it becomes dangerous because people are not getting opposing views or challenging views. And so they're not able to critically think and walk through a different viewpoint, right? So they're just in this echo chamber and they're not hearing anything else, and they think, well, our way is right and every other way is wrong. And I think that's very unhealthy. And I think then that also bleeds into other aspects of culture and society, i.e., politics and the way other ethnic groups are viewed and all of those things. So I think as a parent, you have to be really careful with putting your children in an environment that is an echo chamber. I think that debate and questioning is super healthy. And so I'm looking. If you find the unicorn church, send me a DM. There are some, there are some.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

There are some. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

There are like you'll have to let us know because I'm so curious as to that. I have not found it. I thought I found it at one point, but then I was sorely disappointed.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

You know what? I'm gonna send you this quiz that I have that it's a specific for crit for people that are grew up in Christianity or still feel connected to Christianity, and it asks you very specific questions about your belief and then what you kind of align with.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Perfect. That would be amazing. So so then people can just go on there, take the quiz, and then is it just gonna shoot them an answer right there?

SPEAKER_00 56:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

Or okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

No, it will say, like you align more with this type of uh Christianity that holds this, this, yeah, yeah. So it'll kind of help because I don't, you know, it's it would be unfair to make any assumptions about what you still hold as a belief or not. You may very well hold the belief that you must believe in Jesus or you're going to hell. Okay. So if you hold that belief, but you also hold a different beliefs that feel very opposite of that, we're gonna find that's middle ground for you still. We're gonna find it. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

That's so interesting. I can't wait to take it. Yeah. So for myself personally, I've had to reframe my idea of God. And I do see God as a different entity now than I did before. I no longer picture this man in the sky that's ready to smoke me at any move that I make that's outside of what he deems good. Definitely think that God also has a female energy and a male energy. I that is absolutely like they do not teach that at all, of course, because females in the church are less than, so God wouldn't have any kind of female energy. But I framed God into this wonderful thing in my head that I now feel freer than ever to worship, to talk to, to feel peace and safety in more than I did when I was in the Christianity mindset of fear, control, unworthiness, all of those negative thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

And the beauty here in you know, this is having, you know, gotten my master's in theology and really studied the history and everything, something important that I learned I'm never here to argue faith. Never. I'm I'm here as a support for you to find your faith. Because if it it's it would, I'm not gonna good say, well, according to history, I'm not gonna do that. Because you can't argue people in and out of faith. You can only help them have the strength and the ability to try to understand what that means for them.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

And I like how you said that. You're here to find help them find their faith. Yeah. And that may look different for me, and that may look different for the next person.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Exactly. I can I will work with someone who has fervently different beliefs than me. That's fine. Someone who's more line, it doesn't matter to me because what matter the my whole goal for that person is to have autonomy and to live a happy life. Yeah, imagine that. Oh my gosh. Like that's what that's all. That's all, you know what I mean? So it's not my job to to criticize or say this is what you should believe or not believe. It doesn't, it's just not gonna work. That's part of why I made the quiz because it was like I don't I want people to have to think through those things, so that might not tell them what to think.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:19

Yeah, I'm definitely taking that quiz. I still feel like I still first of all, I want to know where I land. Yeah, very interested. Cause now that I'm like deconstructed from Christian Christianity, I'm like so much more open to other ideas and just like I said, like reframing certain things. I would be very interested to see what it puts me with. Awesome, awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

I'm a good, I mean let me know.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

Oh, I totally will. Do you have any final thoughts for the listeners before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

To the cheesy, but it's like really like honor yourself. Like it's okay, like like all the feelings, the easy ones, the hard ones, the uncertain ones, like honor honor yourself. This is quite the journey, being a human.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

And I believe we are here to go on a journey and learn lessons and to experience life at its fullest. And that message is the opposite in Christianity, right? It's like this is the only way you have to be this way and no way else, and or you're going to live in eternal torment. And I just I can't subscribe to that anymore. And since I've been able to let that go, I've felt so much better. Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. Yeah. So happy. Yeah. Are people able to book virtual appointments with you? Yeah. All my work is virtual. Cool. Well, this was fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

Yes, it was for coming on and hanging out with me today, Ann. Of course, thank you. I had such a lovely, lovely conversation. Thank you. You're the best. Back at you.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Healing from religious trauma isn't about becoming bitter. It's about becoming free. Free to trust yourself, free to ask questions, free to decide what to believe without fear, without shame, or without somebody else's voice in your head. A huge thank you to Anne Russo for bringing both compassion and clarity to a topic that so many people are still afraid to talk about. If this conversation resonated with you, please share it with somebody who needs to hear it. Because chances are they've been told to stay silent too. And if no one has told you this yet, you are allowed to outgrow beliefs that once defined you. You are allowed to change your mind. And you are absolutely allowed to take your power back. I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening. Before we close out, I just want to share a quick reminder. The stories told on this podcast are personal experiences and perspectives. They're shared to create awareness and connection, not as medical, legal, or mental health advice. Some of the conversations here focus on abuse, trauma, and other heavy topics. So please take care of yourself while listening. It's always okay to pause, skip an episode, or step away if you need to. And if anything we talked about brings something up to you, we encourage you to reach out to a trusted professional or support resource. You don't have to carry any of this alone. Thank you for listening.