IFS & Religious Trauma

Jen came into my office after spending her teen years in a high-control religious group, a path chosen by her parents. In nearly every session, she sat with her arms crossed tightly, eyes scanning the room before she spoke. When she did speak, it often came in whispers, with long pauses and a searching quality. One day, she said something that echoed what I’ve heard from many clients who carry the imprint of religious trauma:

"It just feels like I missed out on something I'm never going to get, that some box in me didn't get checked, and now I'm going to be stuck like this forever."

That haunting feeling—that something is deeply off but hard to name—is one of the most common threads I see in people healing from religious trauma. It's not always about what was overtly said or done. Often, it's what never got to happen. For many, that "something" is the natural development of Self-energy—the calm, curious, grounded inner core that Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy identifies as essential for healing and wholeness.

The Impact of Religious Trauma on the Self

Religious trauma doesn’t just injure through fear or shame. It often does so by making the group more important than the individual. Many high-control religious environments reward conformity and obedience while discouraging curiosity, doubt, or emotional autonomy. In such settings, children and adolescents are taught to prioritize the approval of religious authority figures and community norms over their own inner knowing.

As a result, the development of a strong, differentiated sense of Self—one capable of making empowered, values-aligned decisions—gets stunted. Instead of learning how to navigate life from the inside out, people internalize external systems of control. Over time, they may find it hard to know what they want, how they feel, or what direction to take. This is not a personal failing—it's what happens when relational safety is dependent on suppression of the self.

How IFS Offers a Path Forward

Internal Family Systems therapy can be a powerful tool for people healing from this kind of trauma. By helping clients connect with their core Self, IFS provides a gentle and non-pathologizing way to approach the parts of us that hold pain, shame, fear, or anger.

Through IFS, clients can begin to meet their "parts"—the protective and wounded aspects of themselves—with compassion instead of judgment. Over time, they can develop a trusting relationship with these parts and begin to live more from their Self-energy: the calm, clear, and connected state that IFS identifies as the heart of healing.

But here’s the catch: IFS must be thoughtfully adapted when working with religious trauma. Many people come into therapy with internalized religious messages that label their anger as sin, their doubts as rebellion, or their sadness as weakness. Parts that need to be heard and held may have been shamed for years. Even the concept of "Self" can feel threatening or heretical. And often therapists, with the best of intentions, don't really understand the inner dynamics of someone coming from religious trauma, and parts work ends up making client's feel more divided than ever.

Therapists need to tread gently, creating a space where clients can begin to reframe their internal experiences not as sinful or broken, but as human and worthy of care. But they also need to balance this with skill building and challenging that gives clients a template to build their own inner bridges.

Rebuilding the Inner Landscape

For those recovering from religious trauma, reclaiming Self-energy isn't just a therapeutic process—it’s a sacred act of rebuilding trust in one's own inner compass. It's a shift from living in fear of rejection to living in connection with one's own truth. It’s about making room for curiosity, creativity, play, and desire—experiences that were often suppressed in favor of rigid rules or group loyalty.

This is the work we dive into deeply in my Teachable class on religious trauma. We explore not just the theory behind IFS, but how to adapt it for people who have lived through spiritual control, shame-based teachings, and emotional suppression. It's a space to begin reconnecting with your Self—and to remember that healing isn’t about fixing what's wrong, but uncovering what's always been within you.