The Sanctuary of the Seeking

05/07/2024

Hearing the doubling down of Shaunie's husband on Tamron Hall makes me feel like I better actually re-present my findings lol

01/29/2024

I am glad that we are having this conversation in wider popular discourse. One of the findings of shows how early exposure to religious violence and harm mirrors symptom presentations akin to other forms of adverse childhood experiences, particularly when religious violence and harm gets enmeshed in family systems and in educational formation.

However, the lack of research that is intrinsically looking at the phenomenon of religious harm in ethnic minoritized communities blocks the ability for many to conceptualize acts of religious violence and connect it to trauma responses and mental distress later in life. While I struggle with the notion of pathologizing this phenomenon through the DSM/mental health industrial complex, I do think that intervention work regarding religious harm and violence should begin and churches need to consider interventions to stop theological and religiously-based violence.

Some mental health experts are advocating for religious trauma to be considered an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.