Many people who have experienced religious trauma struggle to set boundaries with family members, especially with those who remain in the high control religion that caused the trauma. If you’ve been doing the work of healing from religious trauma and deconstructing your beliefs you may find yourself having different political, moral, spiritual, and ethical views from your family members. This can create a lot of stress, tension, and strife, as you try to navigate maintaining important relationships in your life while honoring your own newfound beliefs and perspectives.
Why is it so hard to set boundaries after religious trauma?
Setting boundaries with family is not only hard because of differing beliefs that you now have with family members. The very nature of the religious experiences that cause religious trauma affect how family members relate to each other. Often religious trauma comes from high control religions that prize self-sacrifice, strict adherence to doctrine, avoiding conflict, and more that discourage people from speaking up for their needs and communicating their limits and preferences in relationships. This may lead to a family culture that also prioritizes these approaches and a relationship with your parents and other caretaking figures and elders that may be more authoritarian than collaborative.
As you try to set boundaries with these family members, you may find that they are unfamiliar with the concept of boundaries, as they were often raised with the beliefs that you’re not allowed to have boundaries. They were likely taught that their boundaries are established for them by God or a religious leader.
Because you spent so much time in this environment yourself, you may have also internalized these beliefs. When you imagine setting more boundaries, you might find yourself plagued with inner doubt, anxiety, and fear, as you face violating all of the unspoken and spoken rules of relationships that were established by your high control religion.
Boundaries after religious trauma starts with a self-inventory
You may be fed up with your family and want to start setting boundaries right away. However, I recommend beginning from within by examining your own needs, values, and goals. It’s important that you take the time to reflect on what is worth preserving about your relationships with family members, and what is worth leaving behind. Setting boundaries sometimes entails difficult decisions around taking space and limiting contact, and so it’s important to know what your priorities are when setting on this path to set more boundaries.
Some people find they are overly rigid with their boundaries, and actually want more interaction with a family member than they initially thought. Or they realize they want less interaction with a family member as they realize just how harmful an impact that person is having on them. This is a dynamic, evolving process that requires a lot of self-reflection to fine tune.
A few questions you might ask yourself to know what kind of boundaries you want are:
- Is this family member doing anything that is currently causing me harm? (Examples: misgendering you, criticism of your body size, or emotionally manipulative/abusive language and behavior)
- Are there things I love and cherish about this family member that make it worth working on our relationship even if we have fundamentally different beliefs?
- Are there parts of myself that I hide to preserve this relationship, and is that sustainable long term for my own mental health?
- If this family member never changes, would I still want our relationship to be as close as it is today?
- If I weren’t afraid of disappointing/angering/upsetting this family member, how would I approach this relationship?
These questions can help you begin to reflect on what’s important to you about your relationship, what is unacceptable and needs to change in order for the relationship to continue, and how much you could be driven by people-pleasing in navigating the relationship. These are all important reflections to guide you to know what boundaries are most important to you.
Boundaries are about what you will do in response to others
Boundaries are not about forcing others to change – we have no power or control to make someone else do that. Trying to influence others is a feature of high control religion, and it’s important to recognize that navigating your needs after leaving that environment does not have to involve any form of coercion, convincing, or control over others. Instead, boundaries are a communication tool that helps you establish what you will do to assert your needs and protect yourself from others.
Boundaries are sometimes confused with requests. Requests are a helpful tool in communicating and shaping our relationships – and often you might first make a request before moving on to a boundary. A request sounds like “Can you please stop making comments about my body?” It’s wonderful when we have people in our lives who can respond proactively to a request. However, your family members may not be responsive to a request alone. They may have the belief that they are entitled to continue to say or do certain things even after you ask them not to.
When a request is not being listened to, a boundary can establish what you will do in response to someone not honoring your needs. In this same example, a boundary would be “If you make a comment about my body size I’m going to leave the house and take a break.” Notice that the boundary in this case isn’t contingent upon another person’s behavior. Instead you are in full control of taking the action that will help you meet your own needs.
Boundaries help guide how close our relationships are
Prentis Hemphill states “boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” I love this quote because it illustrates how boundaries require us to reflect internally about what amount of space we need in order to maintain love with another person. For example, you may have a parent who was verbally abusive to you when you were a child. They still exhibit intense emotions and critical comments, but you also have some fond feelings for them and memories of times that they showed you love. You might determine that the way that you can continue to have warm feelings towards them but also protect yourself from their intense emotions and criticisms is by seeing them once a year in a public setting while bringing a friend along for support. This is an example of determining the “distance” needed to maintain loving feelings towards this family member.
On the other hand, perhaps you have a parent who has shown you a lot of love and care, but their conservative religious views are in stark contrast to your more progressive, deconstructed views. You love spending time with them for the most part, but when they talk about politics, the news, or their religious values, you become angry and have a difficult time interacting with them. In this case, you could determine that you want to see them on a regular basis, such as for a weekly family dinner, and you can emphasize with them that you’d like these gatherings to be focused on shared interests and personal updates. This could be the distance and space you need to continue to feel warmly towards them and want to continue the relationship.
When you bend your boundaries and offer more closeness than is good for you, you could become resentful, stressed, and anxious. Tune into the signs that you have allowed yourself to become too entangled in a relationship that is no longer feeling nourishing and fulfilling. You should also keep in mind that no one is entitled to a relationship with you just because they raised you. Some people find that they have to make the difficult decision to end contact with a family member. I encourage you to seek out support, such as with a religious trauma therapist, if you are considering this option – it can be highly stressful to navigate, and often takes a period of reflection to know if that’s the right choice for you.
Boundaries are challenging yet rewarding after religious trauma
Boundaries can be really difficult to establish after religious trauma. You may be in the process of finding your voice and confidence, and are unsure if you’re ready to take the risk of speaking up about your boundaries. And you may have family members who aren’t used to boundaries being established among family. Yet despite these challenges, boundaries can offer the reward of better taking care of yourself, tuning into your own needs, and cultivating relationships where you can be your authentic self.
I’m a religious trauma therapist and I help people who are deconstructing from religion establish boundaries with their family members in order to live a more confident, fulfilling life. I see clients online throughout Texas, and in-person in my Houston office. I’d love to explore if we’re a good fit to work together. You can schedule a free introductory call here. And if you’re outside of Texas, I recommend checking out the directory of religious trauma therapists at the Reclamation Collective.
Recent Comments