You Left the Church. So Why Does It Still Feel Like It Has a Hold on You?
You did the hard thing. You asked the questions, sat with the doubt, and eventually walked away. Maybe it was Mormonism. Maybe it was evangelical Christianity, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or another high-control community. Maybe it was something harder to name.
You left. So why doesn’t it feel like freedom?
Because Leaving Is Not the Same as Healing
This is one of the most disorienting truths of religious trauma: physically leaving a faith community doesn’t automatically undo what that community built inside you.
The beliefs, the shame, the reflexes, the sense of self – these don’t dissolve when you stop attending services or resign from your membership. They’re not stored in the pew. They’re stored in your nervous system, your relationships, and your instinctive sense of what is safe and what is not.
Leaving is the first step. Healing is the work that comes after.
What "Still Having a Hold" Can Feel Like
After leaving a high-control religion, many people notice:
Guilt or anxiety that doesn’t make logical sense anymore. This can include fear of hell, divine punishment, or fear of being “spiritually lost”
Difficulty making decisions without external authority telling you what’s right
A strange grief for a community, an identity, or a sense of certainty that you had to leave behind
Anger – at the institution, God, family members who are still inside, or yourself for taking so long
A feeling of being fundamentally alone, especially if your social world was entirely built within that community
Confusion about who you are now – your values, your purpose, or your sense of meaning
This is not weakness. This is not ingratitude. This is what it looks like when a system that once organized your entire world is suddenly gone.
The Specific Weight of Leaving Mormonism
For those leaving the LDS church, there are particular layers of complexity. Mormonism isn’t just a religion, it is a total community, a family system, a cultural identity, and in many cases, the lens through which your entire sense of self was constructed.
Leaving can mean losing your marriage, your family relationships, your friendships, your sense of eternal belonging. The grief is real and it is enormous, and it often goes unnamed and unsupported by the world outside, which doesn’t fully understand what you’ve lost.
What Healing Actually Looks Like
Working with a therapist who specializes in faith deconstruction and religious trauma means you don’t have to explain the basics. You don’t have to justify why this is still affecting you, or convince anyone that what happened was harmful.
In our work together, we:
Name and process the grief – for community, a sense of identity, the certainty, or relationships
Work through the shame and fear that religious systems left in your body
Untangle your authentic values and sense of self from what you were handed
Rebuild a relationship with yourself that isn’t dependent on external approval or permission from Heavenly Father or God
Use EMDR to process the specific memories and experiences that still carry the most charge
You don’t have to have it all figured out before you come in. You just have to be willing to begin.
The church may have shaped you. But it doesn’t get to define you.
I work with women and gender-nonconforming adults in Arizona and Washington who are navigating the long, nonlinear work of healing from high-control religion. Let’s talk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelsey Laulainen (she/her) is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in religious trauma, faith deconstruction, and healing from high-control religion. She works with women and gender non-conforming adults in Arizona and Washington. Learn more about Kelsey here.
