Module 9: High Control Religion and Relationships

This module focuses on how high-control religious systems use relational dynamics as tools of coercion and compliance, contributing to long-term relational trauma. Clinicians will examine at least five common strategies used in these environments: conditional love and acceptance, surveillance culture, public confession and shaming, isolation from non-members, and shunning or excommunication. These tactics are deliberately structured to suppress autonomy, enforce group loyalty, and externalize moral regulation. Over time, they produce attachment wounds, emotional dysregulation, and maladaptive relational patterns such as fawning, people-pleasing, or relational avoidance. By highlighting the relational mechanisms of control, the module equips clinicians to recognize how spiritual trauma is often encoded not just in beliefs but in a survivor’s entire relational blueprint.

In the second half of the module, participants will learn and apply three somatic, trauma-informed interventions designed to support relational healing. These include practices for trust-building, boundary-setting, and co-regulation that help clients reconnect with their internal sense of safety and agency in relationships. Drawing from polyvagal theory, attachment science, and body-based trauma recovery, these tools are adaptable to each client’s nervous system state and relational readiness. The interventions emphasize pacing, choice, and embodied connection, allowing clients to gradually unlearn fear-based relational patterns and build secure, self-directed relationships after religious trauma.

This course is approved by APA and NBCC for 1.25 Continuing Education Credits.