Religious Trauma Therapy

Licensed, trauma-informed therapy for the experiences mainstream therapy often misses.

Whether you're still inside your faith environment, in the early raw stages of leaving, or many years into rebuilding — therapy can be a place where the whole story is welcome.

What Therapy Can Address

Therapy here is specifically for the experiences that grow out of religious harm. That includes — but isn't limited to:

Religious trauma — the lasting impact on mind, body, and relationships
Faith deconstruction — re-examining or leaving beliefs you were raised in
Spiritual or religious abuse — harm done within religious settings or by religious authority
Theological harm — beliefs that produced shame, fear, or self-distrust
High-control group recovery — the psychological after-effects of leaving a high-control religion
Exit costs grief — the losses of relationships, community, identity, and meaning
Religious OCD & intrusive thoughts — scrupulosity, fear of damnation, compulsive rituals
Purity culture recovery — sexual shame, body distrust, intimacy struggles
Fear of hell & divine punishment anxiety
Identity rebuilding — figuring out who you are without the framework you were raised with

Evidence-Based Modalities

Tailored to what you're working on. Most clients work with a blend.

EMDR

For processing specific trauma memories — religious abuse, traumatic theology moments, leaving experiences — so they stop hijacking the present.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

For working with the different parts of you that are in conflict — the still-believing part, the angry part, the part that misses your community, the part that's ready to move on.

DBT Skills

For emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and learning to sit with hard feelings without needing to fix or escape them.

Somatic Awareness

For the trauma that lives in the body — the chronic clench, the held breath, the dissociation, the fear responses that show up in church-adjacent contexts.

States Served

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida. Online (telehealth) therapy is available to residents of any of these three states. In-person sessions are available at my Mt. Juliet, TN office.

If you live outside of TN, SC, or FL, I'm not able to be your therapist directly — but the educational resources on this site, and the workshops and groups launching in fall 2026, are designed for anyone, anywhere.

Common Questions

Do I have to be 'done' with my faith to start therapy?

Not at all. People come in at every stage — still actively in their faith and noticing doubt, mid-deconstruction, freshly out, or many years post-leaving. There is no required starting point. The work meets you where you are.

Will you push me toward a specific outcome (leaving / staying)?

No. I do not have an agenda about your beliefs. My role is to give you tools, safety, and presence as you do your own work — not to push you toward any conclusion. Some clients land back in their faith. Some leave. Some land somewhere else entirely. All of it is welcome.

What modalities do you use?

I draw on several evidence-based approaches: EMDR for processing trauma memories, Internal Family Systems (IFS) for working with the different parts of you that are in conflict, DBT skills for distress tolerance and emotional regulation, and somatic awareness for the parts of trauma that live in the body.

Are sessions in-person or online?

Both are available. In-person sessions are at my office in Mt. Juliet, TN (~20 miles east of Nashville). Online (telehealth) sessions are available for residents of Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida.

How is religious trauma therapy different from regular therapy?

General therapists often haven't been trained in the specific dynamics of religious harm — the way high-control teachings affect identity, the unique grief of exit costs, the somatic carryovers of fear-based theology, the family-system disruption of leaving. Specialized care means you don't have to spend your sessions educating your therapist.

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Tell me what you're carrying.

A free 15-minute consultation is the simplest first step. No commitment, completely confidential.

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Therapy consultations for TN · SC · FL residents · No commitment · Confidential