Grief After Leaving Religion: What High-Control Religion Took From You

Apr 8

Nicole Nelson, LPC-MHSP

After leaving high-control religion, most of us experience a wide spectrum of emotions. Loneliness, fear, anger, and hurt come up often as we heal from religious trauma. One that tends to take some time before showing itself is grief. I like to think grief knows her own sacred power so deeply that she waits until we have the capacity to hold her with care before dropping in.

If the idea of grief or loss feels very raw or brings up anger, know that there is no rushing this process. You aren’t “less healed” because grief doesn’t feel accessible to you at this moment. Read on and take only what helps, or give yourself permission to tuck this away for another time.

Grief After Leaving a High-Control Religion

When we’re able to hold it, grief often appears in the form of what we could have had, who we could have been, and what we’re still missing now. It is a deep well of loss that can feel endless. Some common things we mourn are:

Relationships and Community

We missed out on the community we could have had while being isolated in a controlling one and we often experience difficulty in making new connections as adults who never learned how. If purity culture was part of the religious abuse, we were forced to skip an entire stage of development, which can leave us feeling stunted at the very least, often navigating sexual dysfunction and/or other symptoms of sexual abuse and PTSD.

Chronic Pain and the Body

Chronic pain can be anything from distressing to debilitating both during and after high-control religion. Our distress has to go somewhere, and when it isn’t safe to feel emotions, the body will feel them for us. The tension, disconnection from self, lack of safety, and missing autonomy of spiritual abuse are all strongly linked as contributors to chronic pain. The things we lose while in pain can be endless and ongoing.

Loss of Self

When we aren’t allowed freedom in our own minds and bodies, we disconnect from our sense of self and focus on pleasing others and god to preserve safety. We don’t get to be curious about who we are, what we like, or even what we believe. We lose important years of self-discovery that, even after exploring our identity in adulthood, still mean the younger self went a long time without being known and seen. This disconnection from self is an extremely common form of religious abuse.

Missed Opportunities

We may have been limited in our schooling, work, and life experiences as a form of control. Some people grieve higher education after being made to attend a church school that did not properly meet educational milestones. Women are often told it is sinful to want to work, and they should instead spend their time preparing to be a wife and mother. You may have even had an opportunity that would have been celebrated in your community, but you were never taught the self-trust and autonomy required to say yes. This last example touches on the complexity of spiritual trauma and how the webs of control can wrap so tightly, we intentionally make ourselves smaller just to get a bit of relief.

How to Process Grief After Leaving a Religion

With such profound loss, it’s easy to feel like we’re at the mercy of grief, but we can choose how we tend to it. Below is an exercise I really enjoy using with clients and I hope it serves you well. Feel free to make it your own and get creative - this is your grief, your experience, and your healing.

A Gentle Exercise for Grief

Imagine your grief as a well. You don’t know how deep it goes, the temperature of the water, or what’s swimming in its depths. You may have been thrown into the well before, left to find your own way out. It may feel very scary.

Listen to your body’s boundaries around this well. How far away from it do you want to be? Maybe it’s across a large field or on another planet, maybe you feel like standing just a short distance away. In moments when you feel able, you might even want to engage directly with it.

You may choose to walk up to the well and peek in, noticing what emotions appear when you just consider that this loss exists. You may choose to scoop out one small cup of water by journaling for five minutes about a specific loss, like the friends you missed making or the college you really wanted to attend. Maybe you choose a brief but intense cold plunge into the well by listening to a song that allows you to embody the grief for a 3-minute track.

Start slowly and remember, grief appears to us naturally and in her own time. Your body has experienced far too much “pushing through” already. Practice autonomy and agency by honoring your limits. You are doing such beautiful, sacred, and hard work.