I just finished reading the book When Religion Hurts You by Dr. Laura Anderson (OK, it was an audiobook, so technically someone read it to me). She’s a former Evangelical who does therapy, primarily working with patients who have suffered “religious trauma,” something she also has dealt with personally. This is a field that seems to be growing as many people are leaving high demand or high control religions (HCR). After I read that I listened to the Mormon-themed Girls Camp podcast in which she interviewed another therapist who works in this same field but in Utah, Ashley Buckner. So, let’s unpack what religious trauma is, how prevalent it is, and what behaviors does it cause in those who suffer from it.
Last year I caught up with some of my high school friends, none of whom were raised Mormon. One of them was raised in a mainline Protestant sect, and she described how she had finally left her church because she was just sick to death of all the “hellfire and brimstone” talk, the fear-mongering, and the concepts that if they didn’t toe the line with whatever the pastor said, everyone was going to hell. She saw these as things her older relatives ate up with a spoon, but after a family funeral with this type of sermon, she walked out and never went back. She saw this type of messaging as something damaging to her kids and herself, designed to sell them on staying in the church out of fear, and she just didn’t believe it anymore. And to be clear, she was not from a high demand or high control religion.
The truth is that religious experience is very personal and idiosyncratic; some people are prone to scrupulosity, while others chafe at rules and external control. It can also be influenced by parenting styles, family dynamics, local ward culture, and traumatic events like sexual or spiritual abuse. One’s identity within a religious community will also be a factor. If the religion gives out strong messages that marginalize or proscribe sexual identities, races, mores, or personal choices, these are all going to influence how traumatic religion feels to an individual. Your identity and choices may be embraced and rewarded or may be preached against or discouraged by leaders, parents and family members, threatening your feeling of safety.
Religious trauma can arise when individuals experience harm, abuse, or psychological distress within a religious context. It often stems from strict, authoritarian, or harmful religious environments that manipulate or exploit believers. Below are examples of situations and dynamics that can lead to religious trauma, some of them particularly distressing to children who may have a hard time contextualizing them and who are dependent on the adults around them financially, emotionally, and for safety:
- Fear-Based Teachings can lead to chronic feelings of unworthiness, nightmares, and a pervasive fear of divine punishment, leading to loss of peace or self-acceptance.
- Religious Perfectionism or Purity can lead to obsessive-compulsive behaviors such as constant prayer, excessive worry, catastrophizing, and feelings of hopelessness.
- Fears of Shunning or Excommunication can cause depression, anxiety, isolation from family and community, and loss of identity, particularly among those from marginalized groups like LGBTQ people or doubters.
- Spiritual Abuse is when leaders use their authority to manipulate or control followers, demanding obedience and financial support in exchange for salvation; this can lead to trust issues, fear of authority or loss of faith.
- Sexual Abuse, particularly if the institution then seeks to cover it up or minimize it to protect its reputation, creates complex trauma for victims, feelings of shame, spiritual conflict, and often a complete withdrawal from religion to protect the self and heal.
- Religious Homophobia or Transphobia, whether coerced involvement in “conversion therapy” is involved or not, these attitudes and teachings can lead to self-hatred, suicide, internalized homo- or transphobia, family estrangement, and depression; it is one of the most harmful types of religious trauma.
- Gender Role Expectations, particularly in religions that expect women to be “submissive” to men and to follow strict gender roles can lead to women who are financially dependent on men and who lose their sense of autonomy as well as their ability to leave abusive or unfulfilling situations. These women can experience feelings of powerlessness, low self-esteem, depression, and difficulty leaving abusive situations.
- Religious Indoctrination and Psychological Manipulation can lead to children or adults with a rigid worldview and a lack of critical thinking skills, inability to question authority or to explore other belief systems. They may be taught to fear outsiders or secular ideas and perspectives, and they may suffer from intense guilt, alienation, or existential crises.
- Punitive Parenting can result from some religious teachings that encourage physical or verbal abuse or emotional manipulation of children to ensure obedience and submission to religious authority. This can lead to severe childhood trauma, deep-rooted anxiety, fear of authority, and difficulty forming healthy relationships.
- Silencing of Doubts or Questions. When religions malign or humiliate doubters, or discourage voicing concerns and doubts, individuals may suppress their own intellect or emotions which can lead to stunted growth and a fear of thinking critically or independently, leading to a loss of sense of self or not knowing one’s own wishes or desires.
- Apocalyptic Fears. Children and adults may develop a pervasive sense of doom involving vivid images of destruction, damnation or final judgment that can create panic attacks, chronic anxiety, depression or nightmares. It can also lead to difficulty in making future plans and feelings of hopelessness.
- Sexual Shame is pervasive when individuals are raised in purity culture or taught that normal sexual feelings or behaviors are sinful or shameful. This can lead to deep sexual shame, difficulty forming healthy sexual relationships, body shame, or guilt. In extreme cases it can lead to inability to engage in or enjoy sex, even under conditions that the church deems acceptable, and physical responses may be similar to survivors of sexual assault.
- Religious Conformity regarding dress, beliefs, marriage, food and drink, and every aspect of a church’s teachings can lead to those who don’t conform being treated like outcasts, traitors, or spiritual failures. This treatment can result in deep fears of rejection, suppressing individual desires and dreams, and loss of personal identity. Some feel trapped in a life they didn’t choose and would not have wanted.
- Social Isolation. Those who belong to high control religions (HCRs) may be isolated from the “outside world,” even by choice, because non-members do not or cannot understand how all-consuming the demands of their religion is due to the rigid rules and regulations that govern every aspect of life. This creates serious difficulty for those who choose to leave as they may not have a support network outside the group and may also not have developed the skills to navigate new social situations. They may have difficulty reintegrating into society.
- Religious Doubts as Personal Failures. When doubters are maligned as spiritual failures or weak individuals, doubters may feel pressure to suppress their authentic feelings and the maintain a false image of devoutness.
That’s such a comprehensive list, that I have a hard time imagining that there is anyone raised in any religion who hasn’t experienced some form of trauma on the list; to quote Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Of course, those saying life is pain are probably also selling something, whether that’s therapy or religion. Life is pain and religion or therapy are the cure, right? However, I’m not here to create what I see as a false equivalence. Religious trauma is creating a cottage industry in therapy, but it also would prefer to sell you the solution to problems it may be creating. For example, if a person was abused, he or she may be told by Elder Scott to determine how much of the blame falls to them, which is further abuse. As Homer Simpson so eloquently put it, “To alcohol! The cause of and solution to all of life’s problems!” Therapy is designed to help cure some of the problems caused by religious trauma, but it comes after the trauma, to help the individual heal.
There are two survival mechanisms that those with religious trauma often exhibit: fawning and freezing. These behaviors emerge when someone feels threatened, powerless, manipulated, or fearful of repercussions from the religious community or family.
- Fawning is marked by over-compliance, people-pleasing, and self-sacrifice to avoid conflict or punishment, often at the cost of one’s authenticity and well-being. Examples:
- Overcompensating to win approval
- Suppressing personal beliefs or questions
- Sacrificing personal boundaries
- Excessive self-blame or guilt
- Freezing is characterized by emotional numbness, paralysis, and inaction, where individuals feel stuck in harmful religious settings or unable to make decisions due to fear or overwhelm. Examples:
- Inability to question or leave the faith
- Emotional numbness
- Staying in abusive religious settings
- Avoiding decision-making
- Dissociating during religious rituals
This is not to say that all religions create trauma. Rather, it’s the dynamics in a religious institution or community or in one’s family that create unhealthy experiences. Just to create a contrast, these are the characteristics of a healthy religious community or approach:
- Open-mindedness to asking questions and exploring ideas rather than focusing on one “rigid” correct answer or way.
- Emphasis on compassion and personal growth to promote well-being and to ensure individuals don’t feel controlled or limited.
- Balancing doctrine and personal freedom. Providing guidelines for living that allow for the freedom to interpret and apply those teachings individually without authoritative intervention or community oversight, both of which can lead to control and manipulation.
- Respect for doubt that encourages questions, critical thinking, and exploration of ideas without coercion or judgment.
It’s no wonder, though, that dirty tricks like emotional manipulation, gaslighting, shame, guilt and coercion are far more effective at getting people to stay in a religion. We’ve all seen that fear is a strong motivator.
- Have you seen evidence of fawning & freezing among church members?
- Do you feel that its possible to be religious and avoid trauma? Is it possible in the Mormon church?
- How do you balance commandments and standards with the need for individual choice, autonomy and identity required by mental health?
- How can families counteract religious trauma messages and community norms? Is it possible or do the community norms supersede parental influence?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t think it is possible to be religious, (to be a Christian – aka follower of Jesus Christ) and avoid trauma.
If you are serious about your baptismal covenant to “mourn with those that mourn”, then you are going to find yourself in trauma-situated scenarios because those who need mourners are traumatized and/or in distress and need connection and comfort. And when you sit with “those people”, you wind up finding compassion and co-advocating with them to reduce & recover from trauma. Sometimes you even develop the capacity for empathy for those “not like yourself”.
And speaking from experience, if you spend enough time in those scenarios, someone is going to create trauma for you because of the advocating individual you are. Our church culture does not trust unity when conformity and correlated expectations will do the trick – so if you “differ” aka “differentiate” yourself from how others would treat the individual, or deviate from what others expect you will do – they feel threatened and do not trust your autonomy enough to “let it be” – hence trauma.
it was a huge revelation to me to learn about the “fawning” trauma response. I used to beat myself up a little for not being more assertive in problematic situations with church leaders etc and then when I learned about fawning as a trauma response I gave myself a lot more grace about it.
I don’t think it’s possible to get through life without trauma, and I try to remember that even non-religious families and cultures have their set of pressures to conform. But for sure there is some uniquely problematic trauma associated with a religion that puts a punitive God in charge of the world and a bunch of men (or honestly any humans but especially exclusively men) in between you and that God.
I have had a recurring nightmare since junior primary because of a primary lesson. I consider it a trauma.
The dream re-enacts a pioneer story from our lesson about a victim of mob attack who was commanded at gunpoint to renounce the church. Our primary teacher asked us to imagine ourselves with a gun in our faces and tell him what we would do in that situation.
i secretly wanted to live, but everybody else in the class was parroting how they would rather die than renounce the church. The teacher praised their answers, so I said what they said, even though I did not believe it
Sometime later I began having a periodically recurring nightmare where my mom had the mob attacker’s gun in her face as I begged her to just do what the man says. We had a large family and I was terrified nobody will care for us if she died.
In my teen years, I began to shift. I noticed how apostates are treated and talked about. I decided that it would be better to let the gunman harm me than be a pariah among my loved ones.
Then I became a mother and after each recurrence of the nightmare my feelings shifted yet again. This time I decided that I want to live because my children need me and surely a loving God values rearing my children as much as defending the church, right? Can’t I just cross my fingers and lie so I can nurture and rear children as I was told to do? I can always renounce the lie after I am safe again.
It has taken a long time for me to awaken to the fact that I do not have to imagine a gun in my face when determining my devotion to God. I am pretty sure my years spent debating the issue internally was just a trauma response.
WrySauce: Thanks for a fascinating account shared with considerable vulnerability.
The four practices which identify a healthy religious environment in the OP are so wise and important, Each is vital!
There is an abhorrent idea that youth should perfectly mimic their parents’ beliefs and practices. IF we really believe that our spirits are eternal and gain knowledge through revelation, we would not expect anyone, especially our own children, to make religious choices or commitments without considerable questioning and soul-searching. Children of God with just a sliver of individuality and personal dignity have an obligation to ask “Why?” frequently. They should be allowed to question and parents should REFRAIN from providing “Sunday School” answers. Sometimes providing answers is the worst possible response. Teens need to discern the complexities of living a religious life. Young adults need to know that pat answers often don’t exist.
I wanted my children to see the vicissitudes and complexities of the spiritual life. I wanted them to be absolutely willing to say “I don’t know” and know that their God and their parents love them deeply. We call our dinner table “Little Switzerland.” It is a place where thoughtful and reflective discussions can be had, ideas explored and heterodox questions raised. I think I helped my own children understand the situation when they left stage three (Fowler’s stages of faith). When each entered stage four, I told them I was with them along for the ride. (No one should enter stage four alone!) FWIW, my children are currently still active in the LDS Church (our youngest is 25) and I know many more militant and “conservative” LDS parents who have children in various stages of faith and some have left the church, but those situations mean that their children never visit their dinner tables. How sad! If a spiritual life is important, regardless of one’s situation, why would you want your children to journey through that aspect of their lives alone?
We are told that “wickedness was never happiness” and it is often implied that leaving the Church is wicked. We are also told that there is a difference between being temporarily happy and feeling real JOY and it is often implied that only those who obey the commandments and follow the Brethren can feel this joy.
I used to believe all of this. That is, until my own person experience ran head first into the assumptions behind these statements. All I can say is that I am happier outside of the Chruch than I was in. My wife is happier. My kids are happier. Now, maybe I am confusing correlation and causation and maybe 2024 for the Josh H family was always going to be happier than 2014 in the Josh H family. I can’t prove a negative and counterfactuals are endless. All I can say is that being a “former TBM” seems a lot better than being a TBM. Maybe Satan is just fooling me and if so he’s doing a hell (pun intended) of a job.
I suspect that my mission memoir is a real lesson in fawning, deciding that this is the culture I’m stuck in so I might as well join in and gain approval inside the system even if I think it’s a bad system privately.
WrySauce, may I tell you a story that, had you known it, might have helped you in your dilemma? It isn’t a story that we teach, and we should. It in 2 Kings 5.
After Naaman, the captain of the Syrian host, was healed of his leprosy, Naaman did three things. The third concerns us today. First, he offered Elisha money as payment for the healing, which Elisha refused. Second, he had his servants collect some Israeli dirt, enough to burden two mules, so that when he returned to Syria he could worship the true God on that God’s soil. Third, in v. 18, Naaman told Elisha that as leader of the Syrian army he would from time to time have to accompany the king of Syria when the king went to worship his god, Rimmon, and he (Naaman) would have to bow with the king before this idol and false god. He asked Elisha for pardon. In v. 19, Elisha granted Naaman pardon in advance for what might appear to be idolatry, telling him to “Go in peace.”
I regret the trauma inflicted on you in primary, and I recognize it as such. I am aware of the verses about denying God, but we have to take all scripture as a whole and make sense of it. God’s prophet Elisha gave Naaman the pardon he needed to survive, for it would be treason for the captain of the king’s army not to worship with the king. Peter denied Christ, and we’re told that Peter was very sorry for what he did, so much that he wept bitterly, but we are not told that Jesus was angry with him there in the court of the high priest’s palace, nor that the Father in heaven was angry with him. Indeed, when they next met, Jesus said nothing about Peter’s failure. Was it a failure? Peter thought so, and wept bitterly, but let’s look at it from Jesus’ perspective (if we dare put ourselves into the Lord’s mind): Jesus wanted a living Peter. It was not part of God’s plan for Peter to die with Jesus at Golgotha the next day. God needed Peter to live. I think that more often than not, God wants victims of mob violence to live rather than to die.
It is true that we read in Matthew: “whosoever shall deny me (Christ) before men, him will I also deny before my Father” (Matt. 10:33). Jesus knew what Peter was going to do: “Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Matt. 26:34). Both verses talk about denial. The words translated deny come from different roots, but mean close to the same thing. The NIV has disown in both verses, and both the ESV and the NASB have deny in both verses. So apparently, from God’s perspective, Peter denied Him, but no divine guilt attached to Peter. Same with Naaman: he would kneel with his king before Rimmon’s statue, but no divine guilt would attach to Naaman. Would guilt attach to a man, or to a child, who at gunpoint denied being a Mormon? I am not convinced that it would so attach. God wanted Peter to live for another day, and God wanted Naaman to live for another day. God may also want other believers to live for another day. How do I come to this conclusion? Neither Peter nor Naaman denied God in their hearts. Both did what was necessary to survive. They both loved God in their hearts. A little primary child who loves God in his or her heart will not be damned for loving God but for saying what is necessary to wicked men to live another day. Maybe wicked men do not deserve the truth in some circumstances. Maybe this would be casting pearls before swine. Maybe what is in one’s heart is far more important that what one says to wicked men.
Allow me to add one more thought that shows that our heart matters more than our words. My brother taught me this lesson. Imagine you were the house owner in Amsterdam where the Frank family was hiding in the attic. If you were stopped by the police or Gestapo on the street and asked if you were hiding Jews in your attic, you would properly say no. I do not believe that God would consider this a lie, and neither guilt nor sin would attach. We might say that the lie here was necessary to allow a much good to continue–hiding Jews in the attack, and preserving them from murder, outweighs the guilt of lying. Maybe that is true. But there is another possibility: does a wicked man deserve, merit, and have an absolute right to the truth? Maybe not. Maybe a wicked question, because it is asked with wicked intent, merits a lie to keep the peace. Note that the commandment, one of the ten, isn’t that we should tell the truth and not tell a lie, but that we should not bear false witness against a neighbor. Maybe this commandment isn’t about always telling the truth, although that’s what we teach. Maybe this commandment is about not injuring the character of our neighbor, whether we give false information about him in a court of law, or whether we gossip about him among friends. So maybe there is no violation of the ten commandments when a woman asks if her dress makes her butt look fat and we no, when when the honest answer is yes. If I tell a woman, in response to her direct question, that her dress does not make her butt look big, then I might not be telling the truth, but I am also not bearing false witness against my neighbor. I give her this answer because I love her, so there is no intent to calumniate. Remember that Abraham lied twice about his relationship with Sarah, but in so doing he did not bear false witness against his neighbor, and sin, guilt, and penalty did not attach.
Fawning and freezing among Mormons is endemic. From an early age, members are taught by precept and example to “go along to get along”.
I will never forget as a young 8-year-old ditching Sunday School early to avoid giving the ‘sacrament gem’ (I know, dating myself). While making my ill-planned escape, I fell while running across the street and barely missed being hit by an oncoming car. Of course, there were witnesses and my parents drilled me for years on the evils of rebellion. I compensated by becoming a skilled practitioner of fawning and freezing in church settings.
Fast forward to attending the temple for the first time where rituals were emphasized and combined with promises of all sorts of grotesque bodily mutilations if disobeyed. Talk about a master class in promoting emotional numbness.
Fortunately, I was able to attend college outside of the Mormon gulag and learned the art of constructive dialogue. As currently practiced, Mormonism is drifting inexorably toward resembling Orthodox Judaism. The tent continues to shrink.
De Novo, you wrote that our Church “is drifting inexorably toward resembling Orthodox Judaism.” I agree. Had I written the sentence, I might have replaced “resembling Orthodox Judaism” with “Pharisaism,” which one dictionary defines as a “pharisaical character, spirit, or attitude,” with pharisaical defined in the same dictionary as “marked by hypocritical censorious self-righteousness.” I stay in the dictionary and look up censorious and I find: “(1) Tending to censure; critical. (2) Expressing censure. (3) Addicted to censure; apt to blame or condemn; severe in making remarks on others, or on their writings or manners.” Yes, whether we say Orthodox Judaism, pharisaism, or censorious self-righteousness, our focus on the letter of the law, greatly trumping the spirit of the law, recalls to me the words of Paul, speaking of Jesus: He “also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor 3:6).
I will give a little example. I went to tithing declaration very recently. Our bishop had recently chastised the ward because fast offerings were down by 1/3 from this time last year, while fast offering outflow (whicih only the bishop controls) were double this time last year, and he told us that we had consecrated to give all, so we need to be giving more as a ward. I asked him about his comment at tithing declaration, and he told my wife and me that he had looked at everyone’s tithing and had compared the tithing amount with the fast offering amount, and he had determined (judged?) that many ward members should and could be paying more in fast offerings, as shown by their tithing amount. Nothing about two meals, which I thought was the standard, and being generous where possible. My wife asked him to look at our fast offering (which she and I believe to be very generous) and compare it to our tithing amount, and to tell us if we passed his test, and he declined to answer (of course), saying that his talk had caused us to reflect on what we were paying, and that is the behavior that he wanted us to engage in, and we were still happy with our fast offering amount then so was he. He said not one word about generosity, or about sharing, or about how fast offerings are one way to help the less fortunate. He focused only on the mathematical relationship between tithing dollars and fast offering dollars. This might be an example of focusing on the letter and not on the spirit, but he wouldn’t define what he thought the mathematical relationship should be. So he was judging us by a standard, and he wouldn’t reveal the standard. That sounds pharisaical and censorious, but I wasn’t an English major in college and my profession isn’t lexicographer. Maybe Jesus was talking about this when he spoke of the scribes and Pharisees who “bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matt. 23:4).
Please, let us not characterize Orthodox Judaism and the Pharisees as being equivalent. The negativity of the comparisons is a mask for anti-Semitism. Many Biblical scholars maintain that Jesus was himself a member of the Pharisee party and his criticisms of them were more “practice what you preach” than condemnation. While it’s true that the Sauducees were pretty much destroyed after the destruction of the Temple, and the Pharisees survived and preserved their version of Judaism, Jews have enough to deal with without being compared to hyper orthodox Saints.
I have no idea what others’ experiences are like, but I can see some “freezing” in myself. Not sure if it means anything more or less than that.
My podcast playlist this week included an episode of Faith for Normal People (ep 39) featuring Candice Czubernat about religious trauma. Perhaps it is more about where I’m at right now, but one thing she said that really stood out to me was that, for her, trauma came from pastors who told her that she couldn’t trust her own moral judgement and that she needed to trust their moral judgement. Perhaps the reason this idea jumped out at me was because I had listened to a youtube video by Skyler Sorenson (a gay LDS man in a mixed orientation marriage who tends to defend the church’s orthodox positions on LGBTQ+ issues) where he highlighted the idea that those who wish to help LGBTQ+ in the church need to be mindful of what personal revelation can and cannot tell them, complete with an extended citation to Elder Renlund’s talk about revelation where he said that personal revelation will never (almost never?) contradict revelation that comes through the prophet and apostles. I’m not sure exactly where it would fit in the framework the OP outlines, but it seems to me that a part of the religious trauma in LDS circles is related to the tension between “my own personal moral compass” and “the church’s moral compass.” When those are both pointing the same direction, church is easy. When those are pointing in opposite directions, church is difficult.
My podcast playlist and blog reading over the last couple of months has included stuff from transgender LDS and how they feel about the August church handbook updates. These people seem to be stuck right in the middle of this kind of tension, and many of them are leaving the church because they refuse to accept the direction the church’s moral compass is pointing when they sincerely believe that God has led them to transition or approves of their transition.
Which isn’t necessarily to say that one should always defer to one’s own moral compass. I can’t help but think that world history would be different if Hitler had followed someone else’s moral compass. If Trump is elected, I would hope that he would defer to someone else’s moral compass on many issues. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of those who should have followed their own moral compass rather than a church’s moral compass. IMO, we as LDS don’t have a good treatment by the church and its leaders on how to negotiate the challenge when our moral compass doesn’t line up with the church’s moral compass. I wonder if we had better rhetoric for that issue, could we reduce religious trauma in our own portion of the body of Christ?
Josh H – That scripture “wickedness never was happiness” should have a special parenthetical reference that reads (and we’ll make sure of it). There seems to be some implied moral imperative to make certain someone is miserable if they leave the proverbial covenant path. The addition of social castration does not take evil or what we call “sin” seriously. If wickedness truly is not happiness then it must have its own consequence without adding additional insult to injury.
So by “fawning” you mean… behaving exactly how members of the LDS church are taught they are supposed to behave?
SacrilegiousScotty has a good point. The fawning behavior is what we are taught. Perhaps women even more blatantly than men.
And the “freeze” reaction was mentioned above as a reaction to the temple ceremony and strikes me as exactly the reaction the church wants, because the reaction I would have had, if not freeze, was to walk out and never go back. What the Gaddianton Robbers is this swearing I will never reveal their secret. Perhaps the freeze behavior is exactly how the church wants its members to act at that point. How many of us were so shocked that we hesitated on going through with it. Only by the time you are in the temple for the first time, you have a mission or marriage to prepare for and cannot walk out. Think about your first time through the temple. How many of us froze and just went through with it even though we were thinking WTF. If we reacted like normal people, we would have objected out at the point when we were asked to go through with it without a clue WHAT we were going to be promising. I mean, my parents taught me never ever agree to some unspecified promise….and then they EXPECTED me to do exactly that in order to get married. If I had know exactly what the ceremony was, I would never have agreed to the sacrifice of marrying where many of the family couldn’t go. And to be asked to promise to give everything I might ever have to some institution…..um, not only no, but hell no. But I froze and just went through with everything, asking God in my mind to somehow make this alright because every danger alarm in my head was going off. I went through with it, although I was horrified. Horrified at the secret combination I was being asked to join, horrified at mocking another religion as being of Satan (pre 1990 changes—look it up.) horrified about having my new husband placed firmly between me and God and being taken through the veil by my husband while he was taken through by someone representing God. I felt trapped and could not walk out, although I certainly didn’t want to go through with this cult like ceremony that reminded me more of Gadianton robbers than Jesus. So, “freeze” was exactly what the church wanted.
Does the church purposely traumatize us so we are “church broke”? So we put up with being asked to do and give beyond what is reasonable?
SacrilegiousScotty: Fawning & Freezing are common to nearly all controlling relationships. All organizations are controlling to some extent, some more than others. Consider how an abused child or spouse behaves–it’s the same. There’s been a lot of hay made about the ad encouraging women to vote their mind without telling their husbands. In the ad, women nod to each other, acknowledging that they are cancelling out their husband’s MAGA vote by voting for Harris/Walz. Why can’t they tell their husbands? Because they are married to someone controlling who doesn’t respect their choices and sees their vote as something they should own. Charlie Kirk’s statement that these women are “deceiving their sweet husband who probably works really hard to make a nice life for them” reveals the underlying idea: her life and her choices belong to her husband. And we all know that there are a few church leaders who also feel that every member’s life and choices belong to the church. Consider Bednar’s talk that once you’ve been baptized, you no longer have a choice; you have to follow the church’s path for your life. That’s not agency, moral or otherwise. That’s literally what I was taught “Satan’s plan” was: control.
Is it considered fawning to act as a TBM at work so I don’t damage my career trajectory by disappointing the TBM upper management?
Huh, go figure? And all this time I just thought I was being righteous. 😉
(I’m just playin’. I agree that it’s unhealthy how the church teaches encourages the fawning and freezing behavior that it talks about in post. But for reals, I used to think those behaviors = righteousness).
Oh Anna, my temple experience (2003) is exactly what came to mind, too, when I read the description of freezing in the op.
I relate to this so much, I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and left at 15. My family don’t speak to me and haven’t for 37 years. It still impacts my life in some ways and I’ve had to work hard to overcome being shunned and realising I am a good person in society without a religious label speaking for me. I experienced abuse within that religion also that was dismissed. It’s been lonely, but I make myself feel better that at least I am trying to live my truth.
wendysparker72: I am so sorry you were shunned. Religious trauma is real. While Mormons don’t practice shunning per se (I’m sure some feel they were shunned, but I mean it’s not an official religious practice), it’s very common for the believing members to judge, cajole, love-bomb or condescend to those who have left. It still creates distance.