Episode 40: Forced to Betray Ourselves

Olivia Grigg shares her experience of Christianity and the spiritual trauma that it caused her, and gives her take on religious trauma as a whole from her perspective as a social worker and counsellor focused on helping people navigate changing beliefs, deconstruction, and that religious trauma. She discusses how many church environments force us to betray ourselves in many ways, from an early age, and normalize the lack of boundaries, portraying that lack of boundaries and submission to church authority as a necessary prerequisite to community. Additionally, she dives into the normalization of physical abuse of children in the form of spanking, how that abuse is advocated by Christian groups like Focus on the Family, and how that can have long-lasting effects even into adulthood.

Content warnings: traumatic religious experiences, physical abuse of children

Find Olivia on Instagram at @oliviagrigg.rsw, or her website https://www.oliviagriggrsw.ca/.

Resource list for further reading on Adverse Childhood Events provided by the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/resources.html

Articles describing evidence for spanking causing higher levels of stress for adults:
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=senior_theses

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213417300145?via%3Dihub

Hillary McBride's Holy/Hurt Podcast:
https://holyhurtpodcast.com/