Nye said, referring to Trump, “When he would say or do the most outrageous things, and people would say, ‘This is great!’ I would feel like I was back in this gaslight place. What I grew up with was not OK. How does no one else see that this is not OK?…It messes with your sense of reality.”
Since then, election time can bring panic attacks, the “uncontrollable urge to weep” or physical illness at seeing Trump signs around her neighborhood—reactions, she said, that “point to trauma, grief and pain.”
In 2013, Cait West left the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a loose network of congregations that shares many values of the Quiverfull movement. “Seeing Christian nationalism now come to play in the election brings up a lot of memories and it triggers some trauma responses in me,” she told Religion News Service. As a child, West was taught dominion theology, which believes Christianity should be the dominant force in American society.
Jan. 6, 2021, she said, was a hard day. “That’s what I was taught to believe in, and I was seeing it come to fruition,” said West, whose book “Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away From Christian Patriarchy” is due out later this month. “It reminded me of all those leaders from my childhood, who taught me to fear, taught me to be afraid, and taught me that men would be in charge and women would have no voice.”
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Though the concept of religious trauma is relatively new and understudied, said Dan Miller, a trauma therapist, religious scholar and host of the podcast “Straight White American Jesus,” those articulating their election experiences in terms of religious trauma are “part of a much larger-scale disillusionment with mainstream American religion.”
But those who suffer religious trauma aren’t simply questioning, or deconstructing, their faith, said Anderson. They are naming the physiological, psychological and social trauma symptoms—including autoimmune disorders, gastrointestinal issues, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and social isolation—triggered by politics.
Nor is it only those raised in high-control religion or those who dislike Trump who experience election trauma. The “black and white thinking” often present in political rhetoric, not to mention the inescapable nature of political campaigns during election season, can impact people of all and no faiths.
Miller said that those who identify as Christian nationalists may be experiencing a trauma response to economic uncertainty or losing privilege and said politicians create narratives that feed on that fear as a means of political mobilization. “I think trauma runs deeply through these election cycles,” he said, noting that not all responses to trauma are appropriate.
West said she believes that many evangelicals who vote for Trump “and for things that inhibit equality and human rights” do so “out of a dysregulated nervous system.” In her patriarchal Christian childhood, everything from sermons to her homeschool curriculum reinforced fear of the other, of the unfamiliar and of God’s wrath on America if the nation strayed from God’s law.
“I grew up just being afraid, and my body never felt safe,” said West. “So I think it’s connected because these are the ideas that are shaping our politics right now.”
But, she said, learning about religious trauma and having the language to describe it “can help you learn ways to move through that traumatic response and heal from it.”
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
