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
Tell me what you're carrying.
A free 15-minute consultation is the simplest first step. No commitment, completely confidential.
Therapy consultations for TN · SC · FL residents · No commitment · Confidential