Religious Trauma Therapy for Women | Faith Deconstruction

You didn’t ‘just leave a church.’ You dismantled a whole social structure.

If you’re here, you might be carrying grief, rage, relief, or confusion and profound disorientation – sometimes all at once. Maybe you were raised in a high-control religion or survived the dynamics of cult life. Maybe you spent decades trying to fit yourself into a faith system that slowly eroded your sense of self like I did. Maybe you’re only now naming what was done to you as spiritual abuse or religious trauma and need some support.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, you started asking: Who am I without all of this? That question takes courage. It deserves heartfelt support.

What Religious Trauma Actually Is

Religious trauma isn’t just ‘leaving a religion.’ It’s the psychological and emotional aftermath of systems that used shame, fear, doctrine, or control to shape your beliefs, relationships, and identity. The Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery defines religious trauma as “a form of psychological harm resulting from adverse religious experiences, abusive environments, or high-control doctrines. It is characterized as a “trauma that happens for too long” that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope and disrupts their sense of safety, often leading to a need for deconstruction and identity rebuilding.”

Therapy for religious trauma (sometimes called faith deconstruction therapy) helps you identify the harm, process what was done to you and how you internalized it, separate who you were taught to be from who you actually are, and rebuild an identity rooted in your own values and wisdom.

I’m Shannan Blum, LMFT, with over 30 years of clinical experience. As a former Mormon, I’ve done my own deconstruction work. I’m not anti-spiritual – I’m anti-harm. I hold space for all of it: the grief of what you’ve lost, the anger at what was taken, and the tentative hope of something that actually fits.

This Might Be the Right Work If You…

• Feel shame, fear, or self-doubt that’s hard to trace back to anything ‘rational’
• Struggle to trust your own instincts or choices after years of ‘outsourcing’ to religious authority
• Are rebuilding your sense of self outside a religious framework
• Survived spiritual abuse, cult dynamics, or high-control religious environments and manipulations
• Are carrying the complex grief of religious trauma alongside other major life upheavals
• Are just now curious “was it really ‘religious trauma?’” and unsure how to determine that.

I offer virtual therapy for religious trauma and spiritual abuse recovery for women over 40 in Indiana, California, and Texas.

Free consultations available.