When Religion Hurts You Quotes

“A marker of healing from religious trauma is not simply the process of deconstructing one’s worldview and identity and rebuilding a new one; it is also the willingness to remain open to shifting and changing over the course of one’s life.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“Rebuilding a worldview and identity likely needs to include space for uncertainty.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“I have lived far too much of my life with the end goal of eternal life in heaven, and so I missed a lot of life on earth.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“I don't think things happen to us for a reason. I don't think there is some all-knowing force directing our lives so that we can learn a lesson and pass on that knowledge to others. I don't think I had to go through what I did to get this book into your hands. In fact, there were many other ways I could have learned those lessons—and they could have been learned without excruciating pain. Yet I cannot deny that somehow my experiences also turned me into who I am and resulted in this book being in your hands today. Multiple things can be true at the same time.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“These researchers found that trauma is a subjective, perceptive, and physiological response to a person, place, or thing that overwhelms the nervous system's natural capacity to cope. Practically, this means that trauma is in the eye of the beholder. What is traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another, and thr body may experience trauma as a result of either a real threat or a perceived one.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion

“Religious trauma resides in our bodies and nervous systems in the same way that trauma from war, developmental trauma, or sexualized trauma live inside us. Though the triggers and environment of the original trauma may differ, how religious trauma lives in our bodies, on a physiological level, is the same.”
― Laura E. Anderson, When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion