I have been seeing this term for about a year or so. RTS. Religious Trauma Syndrome. I don't know how many people have been and are impacted by it. Reading about it says that questioning and abandoning can send a person's 'construction of reality' into a tailspin. I believe that it could. For at least a while. https://journeyfree.org/rts/ I am not supporting or refuting this. I don't know what to think. That's the link to Marlene Winell's site since she is the person who came up with the term. Feel free to comment.
An interesting article. I have heard of RTS before but I haven't fully investigated it and I don't know how well-grounded it is. I feel I should look at it more closely because we have seen members of this forum talk about personal experiences that would seem to fit the RTS criteria. Personally, I don't think the answer is to make a clean break from religion unless the individual concerned feels moved to do so. I think the better approach is to move away from fundamentalist churches that seek to indoctrinate the faithful and close off questions and close down individuality and free thinking. It's still something of a shock to the system to move from a deeply conservative church to one that is more liberal and affirming, but it's a cushioned landing rather than a hard landing.
Tightrope.....I agree completely with @PatrickUK. When I finally accepted that I am and always have been gay, I had a major conflict my faith. I did not grow up in church and my parents did not attend church. My faith was something that I had come to believe on my own. That made for quite a problem. I also was (and still am) a member of a very conservative evangelical church. I worked through this on my own, but I can see where someone might attach a label to that experience. Like Patrick said, I would need to check "RTS" before I could make a comment about it, but the problem of coming out of a conservative church is very real. Thanks for the link...I'll take a look at it. .....David
