Deconstruction Is An Emergency Room

One question we get a lot here is, “What is the process of deconstruction actually like? How can you tell that someone needs to deconstruct, or is deconstructing?”

Truly? Picture a car crash. A bad one. That’s where it starts: in the smoking wreckage of your life. Usually, when someone begins deconstructing, it’s because the process started them, you see. You’re minding your own business when suddenly, someone t-bones you, or brake checks right in front of you, or goes all road-rage and runs you off the exit ramp.

You crash, you’re hurled through the windshield, and there you lay, bleeding into the median. It’s a terrible image, but most folks begin to deconstruct because they had an experience in church like that car crash. Or, sometimes worse, they begin to deconstruct because their whole life, they’ve been getting into crash after crash, and they keep getting told, “This is just normal,” or, “This is your fault.”

But either way, the results are the same: a very wounded, very confused person who doesn’t know who they are anymore, where they belong, what they believe (and in many cases, unsure of how one even forms new beliefs), why they believe it, and what the point of it all is.

When religious trauma happens like this, on this scale and to this degree, many helpers are needed to tend to the wounded. 

Think again of that horrible car accident. You probably have some initial witnesses who stop to help, right? They’re not trained professionals, but they’re responding to a feeling of responsibility to their fellow human to rescue them. their job to initially assess the situation and get everyone safe from further injury. They will pull people from burning cars, get people away from gas spills, and the like. This person is able to identify that this is an emergency, and that they have a duty to respond.

In religious trauma, this is the person who first notices that something’s wrong. It can happen right there in the midst of the disaster, or it can happen years later when a survivor finally shares their story with someone and they actually get an appropriate reaction instead of a bored “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” Oftentimes, this well-intentioned helper doesn’t understand what they’re hearing, they just know that the person across from them is in serious pain. So they respond with an offer of help, just as any decent human would and should.

And this is often where things can go wrong. Well-intentioned folks, wanting to help survivors of religious trauma, often don’t know what survivors actually need in terms of care. Just like civilians who respond to a crash scene, the tragedy of it is that sometimes, the person responding accidentally makes things worse: they move a crash victim with a broken neck, or improperly perform CPR and collapse a victim’s lung.

In these situations, it’s important to keep a cool head, remember your limitations, and realize that a professional might be better suited for the job. So, if you’re a civilian trying to help a crash victim, call 911.

But then you have the nurses or EMTs who might be driving by a few minutes after the crash. They see what’s happened and rush over with their experience and expertise. They make sure hands that are trying to help don’t accidentally make things worse: they keep the head and neck safe, or properly perform CPR. They can help with the most time-sensitive things, like trying to stop someone from bleeding out.

And oftentimes, because of their experience, these folks are no-nonsense about it. They aren’t concerned about the feelings of the helper, they’re more worried about doing what needs doing to keep the victim alive. So they start barking orders and acting decisively.

And in these situations, there’s yet another danger. First, not every nurse or EMT has the same certifications. A pediatrics nurse probably shouldn’t behave toward a gunshot wound victim with the same confidence as an experienced trauma nurse.

Second, the civilian helper needs to not get their nose broken by the fact that they couldn’t help as much as the civilian professional. Sometimes, at disaster scenes like this, arriving volunteer professionals find that they have to argue down uneducated and well-intentioned helpers.

These things happen when religious trauma is exposed, too. It often devolves into an absurd, protracted argument while the victim continues to suffer. In the worst-case scenario, the civilian respondent doesn’t believe that the situation warrants a 911 call. The civilian professional is shouted down, or the victim, feeling grateful to the initial respondent, graciously dismisses the professional’s help and insists they’re fine. They’re not fine, they’re in shock.

But let’s say that doesn’t happen. Let’s say 911 does get called - someone says, “We need to bring in some on-duty professionals and get this person into the ER.”

So the paramedics show up. These folks have the responsibility to quickly assess and stabilize the wounded, transporting them swiftly and safely to the right medical facilities. They provide life-saving interventions along the way, ensuring the precious human they care for remains alive and stable enough to receive more specialized care. 

Once they get to the hospital, the ER team takes over. Doctors and nurses are there to meticulously evaluate the injuries, prioritize treatment, and manage immediate threats to life. These people have been trained and have the experience to know that time is critical, and every moment matters. They work to stabilize vital functions, completing the work the paramedics started and ensuring the patient’s survival.

Now, things can get complicated here. Often, by the time the victim gets to the ER, family and friends have arrived. Maybe this is a spouse, or parents, or adult children. 

Once immediate dangers are managed, surgeons and other specialists step in. These are the experts who have spent years and years of study so that they can identify deep, internal injuries that are not immediately visible. They repair broken bones, stop internal bleeding, and reconstruct severely damaged tissues. 

Metaphorically speaking, these “surgeons and specialists” are the trauma-informed therapists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers trained specifically in religious trauma. Their specialized knowledge and the approaches they’ve learned over years of professional experience help survivors unpack and begin to heal all those wounds that were closed up by the trauma workers the victim first encountered. But what can happen is that frightened friends and family show up, and they start giving input to the victim. They're not experts, but they love the injured person. Their love is, in a confused and immature way, trying to both help the person they love and soothe their own raw feelings.

Once you get through surgery and intensive care, physical and occupational therapists get involved. It’s their job to guide patients through the work of rebuilding strength, mobility, and functionality, teaching new ways of interacting with the world. To do that job, you have to know a lot of modalities, know how to apply them, and know when they need to be used. Trouble usually comes in here when a specialist either isn’t experienced enough to recognize a problem, or when they’re too fond of a particular tool to recognize when a different one might be needed. But when things go well, these professionals are critical to not just surviving, but getting back to the business of living to the fullest extent your body will allow.

In religious trauma recovery, these roles are filled by peer-support groups, lots and lots of time spent in community with folks who actually care, and in ongoing conversation with more experienced survivors. The goal is to help individuals relearn how to form healthy relationships, trust themselves and others again, manage their spirituality safely, and navigate daily life in light of the realities they’re facing.

Usually, after you’ve had a serious health issue, you need ongoing care and routine check-ups. Setbacks can happen, your health can relapse - all sorts of unexpected things can make the problem recur. In the healing process from religious trauma, this ongoing support is supposed to come from healthy, inclusive communities, continuing education, supportive friendships, and accessible mental health resources.

In that overwrought metaphor for religious deconstruction, we’re not doctors; we can’t do the heavy, intense work that one might need to approach in therapy. We’re not psychiatrists; we can’t prescribe medicines. But we have walked through this process ourselves - some of us more than once. Our community has gathered a lot of wisdom about how to survive spiritual abuse and religious trauma, and how to move ahead safely whether you’re still deconstructing, deconverted, reconstructing, or somewhere in between. 

It’s probably most accurate to say that Deconstruction Doulas occupies the role of the ER, and in some cases, even the intensive care unit (ICU). Our primary responsibility is to swiftly assess, stabilize, and manage immediate threats posed by severe religious trauma, providing survivors with the critical community support and practical resources they need at one of their most vulnerable stages. Oftentimes, there’s loss of income. Every time, there’s loss of support and community. We try to step in and fill these needs.

When survivors first arrive at Deconstruction Doula, they're often experiencing profound confusion, anxiety, fear, or grief - spiritual and emotional equivalents of severe physical injuries. Sometimes there are profound physical and financial needs, too. Our community, kind of like skilled EMTs and ER nurses, quickly evaluate these wounds for urgency and we provide triage where appropriate. We try to carefully prioritize each individual's most critical needs, creating a safe space to process their history, and mitigate further emotional or psychological harm.

Kind of like an ICU team, we then aim to provide intensive, tailored care. This might include one-on-one support sessions, guided group discussions, trauma-informed educational resources, or help securing access to therapeutic practices designed specifically for religious trauma recovery. But what we don’t do is dictate to survivors how it ought to be done. We share our wisdom. Sometimes, it’s the right wisdom for folks. Sometimes, it’s not. Either one is a win as long as there’s integrity.

And the thing is, as far as we know we are only the “emergency department” in the deconstruction world. We refer our community members to more specialized, skilled care for their specific spiritual needs whether available. We help individuals find therapists who can actually help with their religious trauma, when possible. We help patients navigate somatic therapies to help heal the impact of their religious trauma on their bodies.

We do all this because we believe. We believe that healing is possible. And we believe that spiritual abuse isn’t the last word in your life.

We’d love for you to join us. Thanks for reading.

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