- Oct 2024
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www.mdpi.com www.mdpi.com
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The claim that Christians are already “always aware” by virtue of religious identity creates obstacles to becoming more self-aware by listening to those who may have been harmed within and by the community.
I think the assertion that they are always aware also "excuses" them from doing the work non-religious people do when they have acted poorly. To seek forgiveness from those they have directly impacted rather than from God. Or even seek feedback, alternative behaviors, and approaches from their peers. It, to a certain extent, absolves them from the expected methods of relationship mending because their relationship is first and foremost with God.
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“I was taught that the people who hurt you, violently hurt you, every day, for years, are doing it because they love you”.
WHAT!!
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“a baby is a ‘viper in [a] diaper, a ‘depraved’, ‘diseased’ beast” (p. 617). The effect of being raised in this type of environment is evident in my own experience. I remember sermons about the indisputable proof of total depravity being children, who are bad in all natural inclinations and behaviors.
This makes me so sad and angry, not only are these children being brought into environments that preach inherent badness, but the people who are supposed to raise and care for them have had it engrained in them that they are inherent sinners, liars, etc. This fosters a sense of distrust and negative perception of children in adults, including their parents. Both the home and community are infiltrated by the idea that children were born depraved and will act accordingly, giving children no way to separate themselves from that opinion. Because of this, it becomes absorbed into their self-perception.
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“Recent research on shame and trauma has more explicitly linked the two, locating shame at the core of symptomatology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”
Is this true across all cases of PTSD? Has investigation into veterans with PTSD revealed the same root symptom? I have doubts about this, and it's caused a little bit of doubt about the reliability of this source.
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In large measure this is because Christian tradition has not distinguished between guilt and shame, even sometimes using the terms synonymously.
I think even if Christianity were to advocate for a sense of self formed by guilt, this would still result in an equivalently damaging impact. However, it seems that these researchers disagree. Why do they disagree? If shame and guilt are so often intertwined and mistaken for each other in religion (and outside of it), how are the impacts different?
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shame occurs in reflexive bodily processes before language develops; this means it functions in a child’s body before reflective thought about the physiological responses are possible.
The idea that small children are experiencing possibly repeated bodily feelings of shame and are unable to verbalize or truly process that negative experience through communication or thought makes me incredibly sad.
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Instead, it is because religious formation includes norms through which people interpret and understand their experience. A child who understands herself to be a sinner who deserves punishment is formed within a hermeneutic in which those who have authority to punish do so because it is deserved.
This has always struck me as an incredibly strange teaching. Could this possibly connect to spiritual bypassing, in that actions done to someone and experiences are simply dismissed as "God's plan" and not investigated or processed further than that?
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it may shape a relationship with religion which is opposite to the generally stated goals of spiritual and religious practices. Instead of religious or spiritual practices deepening and developing personal truthfulness,
If I were to write my essay on this topic, I would need to be very mindful of my biases toward this topic and approach it very objectively. I am aware of my biases coming through here and the opinions I have formed impacting my ability to believe the goals of religious practice as stated here.
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At the same time, they often also employ “spiritual practices and beliefs to ‘transcend’ or deny problems rather than understand them”
I'm not sure I understand this fully. I need to do more research on spiritual bypassing.
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As trauma, the harm is not resolved simply by leaving a religious group or avoiding the religious tradition because trauma shapes bodies into a “fight/flight/freeze response”
I think, especially if someone was exposed to such thought processes in their formative years, it becomes almost an instinct to question, doubt, and perceive actions/thoughts as shameful or "wrong," which, even after leaving the practice, still impacts an individual especially when gone untreated/managed.
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One of these messages is that emotions exist in a binary of good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. In such contexts, bad emotions cannot be acknowledged or managed; they can only be condemned.
This brings me back to my statement about spiritual harm and the possibility that environments in which harm is done may return to being a safe or comfortable space because there is space granted to talking about it to either troubleshoot or soothe/protect an individual. In religious spaces, this is often not the case and may even cause more shaming to take place.
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whether or not this experience also includes abuse or violence.
Do we need to separate this even further and dedicate investigation of and creation of therapeutic techniques specific to religious trauma with/without physical and/or sexual abuse and violence?
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Spiritual harm may occur in any social context, from a workplace to a hospital to a community center.
True, however, is this type of harm as widely accepted as religious teachings which may result in harm, and is support more accessible within that space which allows the space to feel safe enough to still engage in?
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the modifier religious is less definitionally fraught than the term spiritual, though contestation and overlap is inescapable.
The concept and definition we have so far of "spiritual harm," I would argue, is integral in understanding how religious trauma comes about from the complex and chronic repeat exposure to religious teachings and because we are a spiritual being with psyche vulnerable to harm on a level other than physical.
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etic and emic approaches.
definitions Etic: objective, outsider accounts and observations Emic: subjective, insider accounts
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“Religious trauma is more prevalent than the research suggests and often is a contributing factor to many of the problems that bring people to therapy, including depression, anxiety, and relationship difficulties. For this reason, religious trauma deserves careful attention”
Do we need to approach treating mental illness in those with religious trauma any differently than those with mental health problems from a different psychological cause? What treatment is shown to be the most effective, CBT, DBT, or other therapies?
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Scholarship investigating how religious teachings and practices may traumatize remains scant. Though the scholarship is sparse, religiously traumatizing experiences are not.
The limited research may be because, historically, this behavior and type of teaching were accepted, and only recently have people started to vocalize the negative aspects of participating in a religion so widely accepted and touted as "the right way."
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In this approach, Christian religious trauma is not an added element to traumas of domestic, physical, or sexual abuse by a religious person or leader. Instead, the source of the trauma is formative experience of participating in Christianity.
I wonder how shame and fear are made more pernicious with an added element of physical and sexual abuse by church leaders. However, it is important to understand how Christianity creates an environment fostering shameful feelings at a very basic level without those added elements.
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