Religious Trauma Support Groups

Religious Trauma Support Groups

Australia & New Zealand
WHO ARE THESE GROUPS FOR?

Our support groups are for anyone experiencing religious trauma, regardless of their faith background or stage in their healing journey. This includes people navigating the emotional, relational, and identity impacts of leaving or questioning a religion, dealing with spiritual abuse, high-control environments, or faith-based pressure and guilt.

The groups are designed to provide a safe, supportive, and understanding space where you can share experiences, feel validated, and connect with others who truly get what it’s like to live through the complex aftermath of religious harm.
Register your interest below
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Please indicate which group/s you are interested in attending*

GROUP 1 Facilitator - Sam Sellers: My groups are for LGBTQIA+ identifying people navigating the often complicated and painful intersections of faith, identity, and community. Many LGBTQIA+ folks experience religious trauma not only through leaving or challenging belief systems, but also through internalised shame, rejection, or pressure to conform to heteronormative and cisnormative expectations. We’ll explore these experiences together, everything from grappling with faith-based messaging around sexuality and gender, to reclaiming a sense of self that may have been suppressed or hidden.GROUP 2 Facilitator - Elise Heerde: I facilitate groups for people recovering from cultic and high-control religious environments; spaces where fear, conformity, and obedience often replaced authenticity and self-trust. Many survivors leave carrying confusion, grief, and questions about who they are now and how to feel safe in their own minds and bodies again. In our sessions, we’ll explore the psychological, emotional, and physical impacts of coercive control, indoctrination, and abuse, and how these patterns continue to shape our relationships and sense of self. Each week offers education, reflection, and practices designed to help you understand what happened, reconnect with your inner voice, and begin rebuilding safety, autonomy, and self-compassion. These groups are a place to learn, be heard and believed, and realise that recovery doesn’t have to happen alone.GROUP 3 Facilitator - Jane Kennedy: I’m looking forward to facilitating groups where people can connect and make sense of religious trauma together. We’ll look at the ways we experience harm in faith spaces and the ways we recover. My sessions will include understanding trauma through the lens of the nervous system and, the patterns of protection we lay down to survive. From codependence to shame, anger, spiritual bypassing and learning to feel emotions safely as we rebuild identity; we’ll open this big topic right up. We’ll finish each session with grounding techniques and ways to come back to centre.
By registering your interest, you understand that your contact details and information shared in this form will be accessible to the three facilitators of the Religious Trauma Collective Support Groups — Jane Kennedy, Sam Sellers, and Elise Heerde. This is to ensure we can coordinate group availability and connect you with the most suitable facilitator.

The facilitator of the group you’re interested in will contact you directly to discuss further details. Any information you share in those follow-up conversations will remain confidential with that facilitator and will not be shared with others without your consent, unless required by law or for safety reasons.
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Religious Trauma Support Groups

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