The Art of Self-EMDR for Religious Trauma Recovery

What happens when the beliefs and communities that were supposed to make you feel safe instead taught you to fear, silence, or distrust yourself?

Religious trauma can persist long after your beliefs have changed. You may still feel shame when you question what you were taught. Your body may react to things your mind no longer believes are dangerous. You may have trouble trusting your own perceptions, desires, relationships, or spiritual experience.

In The Art of Self-EMDR for Religious Trauma Recovery, psychologist and EMDR-trained therapist Dr. Deborah Cox explains why these responses make sense-and offers practical tools for working with them.

Drawing from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), attachment theory, trauma research, and expressive arts, this book explores the ways religious trauma can affect the nervous system, relationships, sexuality, identity, voice, and the ability to trust what you know.

You'll learn how to:

• Recognize experiences that may have contributed to religious trauma
• Understand the effects of shame, fear, authoritarianism, and spiritual control
• Identify triggers, memories, emotions, and negative beliefs that still carry a charge
• Build grounding and regulation skills before approaching difficult material
• Use bilateral stimulation without specialized equipment
• Work carefully with memories using Self-EMDR exercises
• Use writing, imagery, and art-making as part of the healing process
• Reclaim your voice, your body, and your ability to trust your own experience
• Develop new beliefs about yourself that fit who you are now

This book will not tell you what you should believe. You may keep your faith, change it, leave it, rebuild it, or remain uncertain.

The work is more fundamental than that.

It is learning to recognize what happened to you, understand how it still lives in your body and relationships, and make room for your own experience to matter.

You were taught what to believe. Healing may begin with learning how to listen to yourself.