Some mental health experts are advocating for religious trauma to be considered an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”
“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.
At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.
Bish, please. Religious trauma haunts everyone.
TY. Came here to say the same.
Doesn’t matter your orientation, guilt and shame are the tools of control and clergy wield them to great effect.
That’s absolutely true, but there’s an added dimension for queer people because it serves as an additional original sin.
That seems very dismissive of the actual trauma many people experience. Lots of people grew up without abusive religious authority figures, or without any religious authority figures at all. I’m one of those people and I don’t want to downplay other people’s suffering by acting as if I experienced it too.
It sounds like you probably experienced religious trauma yourself, and part of how you cope with it is telling yourself it’s just normal. It’s not.
The lgbt person’s story is just an example. The article goes on state religious trauma may affect as many as a third of US adults. It’s not saying this hypothetical new dsm diagnosis would be specific to only lgbt related religious trauma.