By Stephanie Russell-Kraft
Reporter
The New Republic
When Ana Sharp Williamson came home from her honeymoon in the summer of 2019, she moved in with her husband and began the process of deciding which church they should go to. She didn’t want to go to her childhood church, so decided to go to his until they found the right fit. It was only 15 minutes away from their home in Independence, Missouri.
But every Sunday, Williamson had a severe panic attack five minutes from the church parking lot. “I would start to feel very upset and panicky and start crying and hyperventilating,” the 24-year-old said. “I would pull it together in the car, and we would go in and sit through the service, and I would have another breakdown when we left.” Once, after the pastor made an offhand joke about women not being able to preach, Williamson had a panic attack in the pews.
It took a little over a month for her to realize what was going on. Williamson had spent the previous year “deconstructing,” leaving behind many of the conservative evangelical beliefs she had been raised with. By the time she graduated from a theologically conservative Christian college that spring, she knew she didn’t believe most of the doctrines she had been taught. “I was just left with this question mark,” she said. “If I don’t believe this, what do I believe?”
Because of her newfound doubts about her faith, Williamson’s last year at college had been isolating, but the panic attacks were new. “My body’s response to being in evangelical spaces just suddenly changed,” she said. “That was kind of the point where I thought, ‘I have to go find a therapist.’” A few months later, she found one. Before they started, Williamson emailed to make sure the therapist had experience treating religious trauma. Thankfully, she did.
For clinicians, it is still relatively new to see religion itself as a source of trauma in people’s lives, according to Laura Anderson, a licensed therapist based in Tennessee. “Religion has been looked at as a fairly pro-social or communal factor,” she said. “There were very little resources for clinicians and survivors.”