Exploring Religious Trauma Syndrome: An Interview with Dr Marlene Winell

In this article, I’ll be previewing an upcoming episode of MindShift Podcast, where I discuss religious trauma syndrome (RTS) with Dr Marlene Winell, author of the extremely helpful 1993 book Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and others Leaving Their Religion. The full episode will air on the 27th of March, and is available on iTunes, PodBean, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart Radio, etc. I have also provided a link to the show on iTunes at the end of this article, should you wish to subscribe.

According to Dr Winell, not only is the book still in print, it is actually selling better today than it did when it first came out. Although statistics are very hard to track when it comes to things like this, perhaps this is indicative that there are a great many people today leaving cults and religions that are making use of this resource in greater numbers today. It is certainly the case that the #ExVangelical community is an ever-growing one, and many within that tribe report dealing with a great number of issues — and RTS is one of the biggest ones most of us who leave the fold have to deal with. But simply identifying it is the first step.

What exactly IS RTS? Perhaps the following definition will assist you in finding out whether or not you may be suffering from elements of this potentially debilitating syndrome. According to Dr Winell, there are two aspects to RTS:

1. The actual theological teachings and practices of the religion…