On Religious Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Why does On Monsters and Phantoms matter?

Childhood trauma and exposure to prolonged toxic stress can—and often does—lead to physical, mental and behavioral health disorders in adults. Neuroscience around pediatric neural and brain development tells us why: the cortisol flood rewires our brains, as well as our nervous and endocrine systems. Physiologically speaking, we get messed up. Now, health practitioners are beginning to ask What happened to you? in addition to What are your symptoms? to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their patients afflicted with mental health and other disorders.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have identified adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as a national epidemic we must better understand and face, because we now know that ACEs impact our perception of reality and herald other maladies later in life.

Current data tells us that depression, anxiety and suicide cases are on the rise. The question we need to ask is how many of these cases actually stem from ACEs? Likely a majority. We must urgently address ACEs by having broader and more regular conversations about them and their impact.

Though trauma-informed care is evolving, we don’t understand everything about how to truly help the traumatized lead resilient lives, nor do we completely understand how to determine who, after surviving ACEs, will be resilient and who won’t. Epigenetics, environment, education, personality and support systems play a role in resilience, but we don’t fully know exactly how and to what degree. One ACEs survivor may lead a normal and productive life, while a similar survivor may overdose on heroin or shoot up a grocery store.

When I sensed the first itch to write On Monsters and Phantoms, I immersed myself in the ACEs literature, beginning with Nadine Burke Harris’, Robert Anda, M.D. and Vincent J. Felitti’s, M.D., seminal work on linking childhood trauma to negative health outcomes in adults, which launched a national conversation on the topic in the early 2000s. I also researched the concept of scrupulosity—a form of obsessive compulsive disorder involving religious or moral obsessions—and how that condition could be born from ACEs. Since then, I have linked with nationally-renown ACEs thought leaders and University of Florida research juggernauts to glean more insight into ACEs and human behavior. I have also learned more about Religious Trauma Syndrome from noted psychiatrist and author Dr. Marlene Winell.

If this is your first foray into the world of ACEs and want to learn more, I recommend two immediate stops:

  • The ACEs-Too-High online community, where you can keep an eye on emerging trends, research, discoveries and personal testimonies. There you can learn your ACEs score. Per that site, there are 10 types of childhood trauma measured in the ACE Study. Five are personal:

    • physical abuse

    • verbal abuse

    • sexual abuse

    • physical neglect

    • emotional neglect

    Five are related to other family members:

    • a parent who’s an alcoholic

    • a mother who’s a victim of domestic violence

    • a family member in jail

    • a family member diagnosed with a mental illness

    • and the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death or abandonment

  • Resilience: The Biology of Stress & The Science of Hope by KPJR Films

Here’s another excellent resource for ACEs and their impact on our life-long health.

Check Out My Video Series on Religious Trauma

In January 2025 I launched my H.G. Roberts YouTube channel and my 10-video series on religious trauma, specifically as that trauma pertains to protestant fundamental Christianity here in America … fundamental meaning a literal and conservative interpretation of the Bible. Some might also call this evangelical Christianity. That’s the world I came from and spent 25 years of my life in. But there are certainly other stripes of Christianity for which this topic is relevant.

In this series about religious trauma, I’m talking to the struggling Christian believer, the one who is wrestling with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression or doubt as a result of their beliefs. I’m also talking to the Christian who may be on a path to critically deconstructing your faith in general. I’m talking to the Christians for whom this religion is causing harm but they’re not sure what to do about it. But I’m also talking to pastors, theists and apologists. Despite the proven benefits of religious and church affiliation, you and other Christians are likely unaware of the harm that’s happening under your watch by teaching the Bible literally, and that what you’re teaching is causing and perpetuating religious trauma in many of your congregants, without you even knowing it because very few if any people will openly talk about it. And maybe your congregants’ symptoms haven’t yet manifested, but soon will. So, my hope here is that I will tell you, pastors, what your congregants might either be too afraid to talk about, or they don’t yet have the best vocabulary to talk about. I promise you that many more congregants than you think are suffering from depression, anxiety, shame, guilt and other mental health conditions because of what the Bible and Christianity is making them believe about themselves and the world around them. For them, like me, Christianity and the Bible are creating a destructive self and world view. I’ll show you how and why based on my own experiences.

In these videos we’ll talk about what religious trauma is, how it forms, how Christianity, despite its beneficial claims, can rob us of our agency, self-esteem, self-worth and identity, which leads to trauma, how religious trauma ties into our personalities, mental temperaments and life experiences, and, more importantly, our adverse childhood experiences, and finally what you can do to overcome religious trauma if you’re suffering from it. Another way of saying that is how you can become resilient, perhaps even through receiving trauma-informed therapy and care.

Below is a link to Episode 1: Introduction to Religious Trauma. This video will avail you to my YouTube channel and the rest of the series. I look forward to your comments so that we can create a richer data set of religious trauma experiences to learn more about this critical issue.