Religious Trauma Therapy in Utah | Lionheart Counseling LLC
Religious trauma is one of the loneliest things to carry. The people who might otherwise support you through hard times are often the people you've lost — or the people who caused the harm in the first place.
Maybe you left a faith community and lost everything that came with it — your people, your identity, your sense of who you are and what your life means. Maybe you stayed but something broke inside you that you can't quite name. Maybe you experienced something that used spiritual authority to control, manipulate, or harm you. Maybe you're grieving a version of your faith that no longer feels true — and mourning it feels strange, like you're not allowed to grieve something you chose to leave.
Whatever brought you here, one thing is true: what happened to you was real. The pain is real. And you deserve support from someone who understands what you're carrying — not just clinically, but personally.
What Is Religious Trauma?
Religious trauma occurs when a person's experience of faith — or of a religious community, leader, or system — causes lasting psychological harm. It's not about faith itself being harmful. It's about what can happen when spiritual authority is used to wound, control, silence, or shame the people it was supposed to serve.
Religious trauma can look like:
Leaving a faith community — by choice or by force — and experiencing profound grief, isolation, and identity loss
Experiencing spiritual abuse at the hands of a church leader, pastor, or religious authority figure
Navigating a faith transition — deconstructing beliefs you've held your entire life and not knowing who you are on the other side
Carrying shame, fear, or guilt instilled by religious teaching that told you something was fundamentally wrong with you
Losing your faith community along with your faith — and losing the relationships, the belonging, and the sense of purpose that came with it
Struggling to trust religious institutions, leaders, or even God after being hurt by someone who claimed to represent all three
Understanding What Happened to You
One of the most important distinctions in healing from religious trauma is this: God did not hurt you. A person did.
A person who twisted, corrupted, and abused the name of God — using spiritual authority as a tool of control, harm, or manipulation — is responsible for what happened. Not God. Not faith itself. Not you.
This distinction matters enormously in the healing process. Religious trauma so often fuses the abuser with the divine in the wounded person's mind — making it feel impossible to approach faith, community, or even the concept of God without reactivating the wound. Part of the therapeutic work is carefully, compassionately separating those things — so you can decide for yourself, in your own time and on your own terms, what you believe and what kind of relationship you want to have with faith going forward.
That decision belongs to you. Ethically speaking, therapy is not about steering you toward or away from belief. It's about making sure the choice is genuinely yours — free from the distortion, control, and shame someone else imposed on you.
You Are Allowed to Seek
One of the deepest wounds of religious trauma is having your right to think for yourself taken away. Being told what to believe. Being punished for questions. Being shamed for doubt. Being handed conclusions and forbidden from examining them.
Part of healing from religious trauma is reclaiming that freedom — the freedom to research, to question, to learn, and to seek truth about God, faith, religion, and community entirely on your own terms.
That invitation is something therapy at Lionheart Counseling actively supports. You are not here to be guided toward any particular conclusion about faith. You are here to reclaim the right to seek — honestly, freely, and without fear of what you might find. Whatever you discover through that process belongs to you. And the process of seeking itself, free from coercion and shame, is part of what healing looks like.
A note on my own faith: I am a Christian and an active pastor. I share this transparently because you deserve to know who you are working with. I also share it with an equally clear commitment: it is not my role, my desire, or my ethical right as a licensed clinician to impose my personal beliefs on anyone — especially someone who has been wounded by church and religion in my own life. The ACA Code of Ethics that governs my practice is explicit on this point. My faith informs my compassion and my humility. It does not determine your conclusions. Your seeking is yours alone, and I will honor that completely.
A Word From My Own Journey
I understand religious trauma from the inside — not only as a clinician but as someone who has personally lived the experience of leaving the LDS community and navigating the profound losses and hurt that came with it. I know what it costs. I know the grief of losing not just a belief system but an entire world — the relationships, the identity, the sense of belonging and purpose that faith communities provide.
I also know, from the other side of that experience, that healing is genuinely possible. That safe, honest, humble faith community can exist. That it is possible to find people who lead not from a place of authority and control but from a place of genuine humility — people who are just as broken, just as honestly in pursuit of something real, as the people they serve.
That's not a promise that the community you lost will be restored. It's a promise that what you're looking for — authentic connection, genuine grace, honest community — is real and findable. And that you don't have to carry the weight of what happened to you alone while you look for it.
What Religious Trauma Therapy Looks Like
Therapy for religious trauma at Lionheart Counseling is slow, careful, and entirely client-led. You will never be pushed toward or away from faith, belief, or community. The work is about your healing — not about reaching any particular theological conclusion.
Using EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), CBT, and Solution-Focused Therapy, we address religious trauma at multiple levels:
EMDR — processes the specific memories and experiences of spiritual harm so they lose their emotional charge and stop driving your present responses
IFS — helps you understand and heal the parts of you that formed in response to the trauma — the parts that carry shame, fear, or the crushing weight of beliefs that told you something was fundamentally wrong with who you are
CBT — examines the specific thought patterns and beliefs religious trauma instilled — about yourself, about God, about safety, about trust — and helps you examine whether they're actually true
Solution-Focused Therapy — keeps the work moving forward, building toward the life and the sense of self you want to inhabit going forward
Who This Page Is For
You may be in the right place if you are:
Navigating a faith transition — leaving a religion or deconstructing beliefs you've held your whole life
Healing from spiritual abuse by a church leader, pastor, or religious authority figure
Grieving the loss of a faith community and the relationships, identity, and belonging that came with it
Carrying shame, fear, or guilt from religious teaching that told you something was wrong with you
Trying to separate your experience of religious harm from your relationship with God or faith more broadly
Looking for a therapist who understands this from the inside — not just clinically but personally
A Recommended Resource
Spiritually Abused by Steve Pierson — lead pastor and founder of Redemption Hill Church in Utah — is one of the most honest and compassionate explorations of spiritual abuse available. Pierson writes from a place of deep faith and deep honesty about the ways religious authority can be corrupted and weaponized, and about the possibility of healing and genuine community on the other side. For anyone navigating spiritual abuse or religious trauma, this book is worth reading.
Ready to Begin?
You've already carried this long enough alone. Therapy is a space where what happened to you can be named, processed, and healed — at your pace, on your terms, with someone who understands what you've been through.
In-person sessions are available Tuesday through Friday at our Murray, Utah office. Telehealth religious trauma therapy is available to adults throughout the entire state of Utah — including Salt Lake City, South Jordan, Sandy, Draper, West Jordan, Taylorsville, Herriman, Cottonwood Heights, Orem, and Provo.
A free 15-minute consultation is available so you can get a sense of whether this is the right fit before committing to a full session.
Book a Free Consultation or reach out at dax@lionheartcounselingllc.com | (801) 921-7854
Dax Johnson, LCMHC (#13937032-6004) | Lionheart Counseling LLC | 5296 S Commerce Dr, Suite 206, Murray, UT 84107Licensed under Utah Code 58-60-402 and 58-60-407
