The Difference: Religious and Spiritual Trauma

Religious and spiritual trauma are terms often used interchangeably, and though some counselors think of them as being the same, for people who have spent a lot of time in a religious group, it is very clear that they are not the same. While they often bleed into each other, they stem from different sources and affect individuals in different ways.

Understanding this distinction is crucial for those who’ve experienced harm, for the counselors who seek to help, for clergy at risk of perpetuating harm, and for communities trying to respond with sensitivity and support.

What Is Religious Trauma?

Religious trauma occurs within an institution, often related to culture and not to the religious doctrine itself. It involves harm that results from betrayal, coercion, or mistreatment by religious leaders or members within the religious group. Harm is most extreme when it is ignored or excused to protect the image of the religious group. This can include silencing abuse survivors, punishing nonconformity to cultural norms, or enforcing community loyalty at the expense of broader individual well-being.

A story can make this easier to understand. Imagine a young man chooses to serve a mission for his faith out of sincere love for God and a desire to help others. He studies, prays, and wants to share the love of God that fills him. When he arrives in the mission field, he discovers that not everyone is there for the same reason. Some of the other missionaries are there because it looks good socially. Others were pressured by parents, religious leaders, or offered financial incentives to go on a mission. One missionary says, “I wouldn’t be here except my dad said he would buy me a car if I came.”

The sincere missionary finds himself mocked, excluded, or criticized for being too earnest and too religious. His sense of purpose is dismissed by peers who treat the mission as a social ladder rather than a spiritual calling. Now imagine that religious leaders do nothing to stop the mistreatment—or worse, they shame the sincere missionary and tell him not to cause problems with the other missionaries, that it is his responsibility to forgive them. He is held to a religious standard, while the other missionaries are not. In such cases, the harm deepens.

This is religious trauma. It is not created by doctrine, but by the culture and politics of the people within the institution itself, people who focus on culture rather than conversion within the group.

What Is Spiritual Trauma?

Spiritual trauma, on the other hand, is less about institutions or culture and more about the misuse of beliefs. It occurs when teachings about God, worthiness, or morality are twisted to control, shame, silence and suppress.

For example: A priest frequently quotes scripture that women should love and sacrifice for their husbands. He never mentions the equal commandment that men should love and sacrifice for their wives. Over time, women in the congregation begin to feel that obedience is their spiritual duty, but nobody holds the men spiritually accountable. The women may begin to associate holiness with silence, or righteousness with suffering. Their understanding of the divine becomes entangled with self-neglect because of how the doctrine has been twisted to protect power structures or personal biases. Essentially, the men in this group do not fare any better within this culture, as they are left incapable of forming connected, healthy relationships, even though patterns for health are present in the doctrine that is ignored.

The spiritual journey is often full of paradox, which can be worked through. It required humility, reverence, questioning, and yield faith and personal insight. But contradiction, where love is preached and cruelty is practiced, or where obedience is demanded while justice is denied, leads not to truth, but to confusion, suppression, and trauma. Whereas paradox resolves in truth and peace, contradiction never resolves.

Who Doesn’t Love a Chart?

Here’s a simplified breakdown:

Type of Trauma	Religious Trauma	Spiritual Trauma
	Religious Trauma	Spiritual Trauma
Source	Institution, group, or leadership failure	Doctrinal distortion or manipulation
Where it Happens	Church, temple, mosque, religious community	Sermons, home life, teachings, relationships
Main Impact	Betrayal of trust, coercion, exclusion	Shame, confusion, emotional disconnection
Healing Needs	Boundaries, truth-telling, safe relationships	Restoring agency, connection, and clarity

Why the Distinction Matters

When you enter a counseling office and say, “I’m struggling with my faith,” that can mean a thousand things. For a counselor to label everything as religious trauma misses the nuance of your experiences, thoughts and beliefs. Someone might still believe in God, but have deep emotional wounds from their experiences with other religious people. Another person may have no desire for spirituality in their life at all, but a need to separate themselves from feeling controlled or shamed. These are different experiences, and they deserve different responses.

Religious and spiritual trauma aren’t new, but we’re only just beginning to define them. By distinguishing between them, we honor the complexity of belief, the dignity of every seeker, and the possibility of healing without erasure.

Healing is not about rejecting faith or cutting ties with the sacred. It’s about disentangling what’s divine from what’s distorted, restoring the possibility of a relationship with God, self, and others in a way that feels authentic, empowered, and whole.  It’s not just about whether a person stays or leaves the religious group, so much as whether they can regain the ability to think, feel, and believe freely.

A Word to Survivors

If you’ve experienced religious or spiritual harm, it’s important to know that it is not a failure of your faith to name harm. In fact, acknowledging what went wrong is often the first step toward authentic healing and connection with the divine.

This article focuses primarily on institutional harm and spiritual distortion, but religious trauma is often a family affair. Family histories filled with religious persecution and the lingering effects of trauma passed through generations also shape these experiences. Those deeper layers will be explored in future articles. 

I encourage anyone doing this work to explore their family connection with religion. I hope to work with you toward healing, without demonizing religion or alternately assuming all religion is safe. It is possible for us to hold space for both realities.